A one-day online workshop, 1 April 2026, 10am-5pm, organised by The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies
This one-day online workshop 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. But the interest of the Bloomsbury Group in Byzantine art was more fundamental 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, this year Charleston (Vanessa and Duncan’s Sussex home) will mount 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 (including Professor Christopher Reed, author of Bloomsbury Rooms), and will also include discussion sessions. It is open to members of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (reduced fee), but also to non-members (full fee). It is organised by Liz James, Rowena Loverance and Shaun Tougher. Further details will be released in due course. For expressions of interest/initial queries please contact Shaun Tougher (toughersf@cardiff.ac.uk).