Duncan Grant

Duncan Grant (1885 – 1978), was a Scottish painter and designer, and a central figure in the circle of artists, writers, philosophers and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury group. Influenced by European Modernists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Grant often deployed non-representational colour and geometric abstraction for his depictions of everyday life; portraits of friends and family members, and landscapes inspired by his travels throughout Europe. Over his seven-decade career, as well as painting on canvas, Grant experimented with textiles, ceramics, murals, illustration, theatre and interior design.

For more than fifty years Duncan Grant was closely associated with artist Vanessa Bell, both professionally and personally, the two notably collaborating on the decoration of Omega Workshops, founded by Roger Fry in 1913 to sell furniture, fabrics and household accessories designed and made by artists, and of Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse they shared for 45 years.

Grant exhibited widely throughout his lifetime including at the New English Arts Club from 1909 and the Friday Club, founded by Vanessa Bell, from 1910. He participated in the ‘Twentieth-Century Art’ show at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1914, and exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1926 and 1932. A retrospective of Grant's work was held in 1959 at the Tate Gallery, and in 1975, in honour of the artist’s ninetieth birthday, a further exhibition was held at the Tate Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.