Tate Britain in London opens Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury on 12 November 2026, an exhibition devoted to the five-decade creative partnership between the painters Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) and Duncan Grant (1885–1978). According to Tate’s press release, the show brings together more than 300 works and includes a restaging of the studio the two artists shared at Charleston, their home in East Sussex, which has been relocated to the museum while Charleston undergoes conservation work. The exhibition runs until 11 April 2027.
Tate presents it as the first major exhibition to chart the pair’s relationship and artistic trajectory together, from their early post-impressionist and abstract paintings to the late naturalistic self-portraits, landscapes and still lifes. The Bloomsbury Group is often remembered first through its writers, among them Bell’s sister Virginia Woolf; this exhibition places the two painters at the centre of the story, and extends it beyond the canvas to furniture, ceramics and textiles decorated with their designs.
From Gordon Square to post-impressionism
Bell and Grant were core members of the Bloomsbury Group, the circle of artists, writers and intellectuals who met at 46 Gordon Square, the London home of Bell and her siblings. The press release dates the start of their lasting relationship to a 1909 letter in which Bell invited Grant to tea and proposed that they call each other by their first names, although they had first been introduced in 1906.
The exhibition opens with work made before the two met: Bell’s Iceland Poppies (c.1908–9), painted after her instruction under John Singer Sargent, and Grant’s After Chardin (c.1906), one of the copies he made after historic masters in Paris. It then follows their response to Roger Fry’s 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists in London, through works such as Bell’s Studland Beach (c.1912) and Grant’s Group at Asheham (1913). Paintings of the same subject made side by side, Bell’s Still Life on Corner of a Mantelpiece and Grant’s The Mantelpiece (both 1914), are shown together. Tate states that the pair produced some of the earliest abstract works in Britain.
The Omega Workshops and shared commissions
A section is devoted to the Omega Workshops, the design enterprise founded in 1913 that blurred the line between fine and decorative art, and of which Bell and Grant became directors. Their designs were applied to ceramics, fans, lampstands, chairs, tables and wardrobes. The exhibition also covers their commissions, including Bell’s book-cover designs for Virginia Woolf and Grant’s murals, as well as the rarer projects they made together, notably the Famous Women Dinner Service (1932–34): 50 hand-painted Wedgwood plates celebrating women from Jane Austen to Cleopatra, which Tate describes as a landmark feminist work.
Life at Charleston
Bell and Grant shared a home for more than 50 years and had a daughter, Angelica. The press release notes that Bell had an open marriage with the art critic Clive Bell, while Grant’s relationships were predominantly with men, and that the exhibition includes rarely seen erotic male nudes by Grant that long remained hidden. After the First World War the two returned to more naturalistic subjects, painting along the Seine in Paris and in the South of France, Italy and Spain. By the 1920s they had settled at Charleston in Sussex, the setting of works such as Grant’s The Hammock (1921–23) and Bell’s Interior with the Artist’s Daughter (c.1935–36). The studio they shared there until 1939 is shown outside Charleston for the first time.
The exhibition is organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with Charleston and curated by Thomas Kennedy, Curator, Modern British Art, and Eliza Spindel, Assistant Curator, Modern British Art, at Tate Britain. According to Tate, it is supported by Kim Jones, Vice President of the Charleston Trust, with further support from Farrow & Ball.
Practical information: Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury, Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG. 12 November 2026 – 11 April 2027. Open daily 10.00–18.00. Tickets via tate.org.uk; free for Tate Members; £5 for visitors aged 16–25 through Tate Collective.
Sources: Tate press release (27 May 2026); Tate Britain exhibition page; Art Fund exhibition listing.
This article was prepared with AI assistance and reviewed by the Honargardi editorial team.