This one-day online workshop, organized by Liz James, Rowena Loverance, and Shaun Tougher, will focus on the interest of members of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantium, especially Byzantine art. Both Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant demonstrated an interest in Byzantine art, in terms of their aesthetic concerns and their subject matter; in 1912 Vanessa Bell painted a work entitled ‘Byzantine Lady’ and Grant painted a similar work entitled ‘The Countess’, and their Famous Women dinner service, commissioned by Kenneth Clark in 1932, featured the Empress Theodora as one of the twelve queens depicted on the set of fifty plates. However, the Bloomsbury Group’s interest in Byzantine art was more profound than this. Byzantium had a vital place in Clive Bell’s Art (1914); Clive, art critic and husband of Vanessa, declared ‘since the Byzantine primitives set their mosaics at Ravenna, no artist in Europe has created forms of greater significance unless it be Cézanne’. His enthusiasm was shared by Roger Fry, both artist and art critic (and collaborator with Vanessa and Duncan in the Omega Workshop, 1913-1919), who initially labelled Cézanne and Gauguin as ‘proto-Byzantines’ before adopting the term ‘post-Impressionists’. Boris Anrep, who worked in mosaic (e.g. at Westminster Cathedral), knew Fry (Anrep’s wife left him for Fry), Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the work of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry. In October 2024 there was an exhibition at the MK Gallery on Vanessa Bell, A World of Form and Colour, Charleston (Vanessa and Duncan’s Sussex home) has recently opened an exhibition devoted to Roger Fry (15 November 2025 – 15 March 2026), and in 2026 there will a major exhibition at Tate Britain on Bell and Grant (12 November 2026 – 11 April 2027). Thus, this is an opportune moment to turn the spotlight on the interest of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantium.

The workshop will feature a series of talks by scholars, as well as discussion sessions. Contributors include:

• Elizabeth Berkowitz, “A Modern-made Byzantium”?
• Niamh Bhalla, More than a Method? Boris Anrep’s St Patrick Mosaic at Mullingar and the Dialectics of Universalism, Continuity and Irish Particularity
• Rowena Loverance, “Degraded and conventional” or “awfully swell”? Roger Fry’s Use and Abuse of Byzantine Art
• Chris Reed, Byzantium in/as Modern Art; or, How to Avoid “A Nasty Wooly Realism about the Sheep”
• Jane Williams, “A breath in the modern world.” Boris Anrep’s Mosaics: A Russian Contribution to the Enthusiasm for Byzantium

The workshop is open to members of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (reduced fee), but also to non-members (full fee). The reduced fees also apply to members of the British School at Athens. To find out more about how to enroll or contact details, please click here.