In pictures: Portraits of Virginia Woolf
- Published
More than 100 portraits of writer Virginia Woolf will be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in a new exhibition, titled Art, Life and Vision. They include this 1912 painting by her sister Vanessa Bell (left, courtesy of the National Trust). The pair helped found the Bloomsbury Group of writers, artists and intellectuals. The photograph on the right was taken by George Charles Beresford in July 1902, when Woolf was just 20 and still known as Virginia Stephen.
The exhibition also features paintings of Leonard Woolf, whom Virginia married in 1912. Together they founded the publishing company Hogarth Press, which issued her novels, as well as those of TS Eliot, among others. Virginia and Leonard Woolf (left) were photographed by Gisele Freund in 1939, while the 1912 portrait of Leonard (right) is by Henry Lamb and comes from a private collection.
Woolf's friends, family and literary peers all feature in the show, which will run from 10 July to 26 October. This photograph by Lady Ottoline Morrell was taken in June 1924 and shows Woolf with fellow writer TS Eliot, a friend and contemporary who was also part of the Bloomsbury circle.
The exhibition includes a letter Woolf wrote to her sister Vanessa Bell, shortly before her suicide in 1941 at the age of 59. Bell had painted Virginia Woolf in an Armchair (left) in 1912. The oil painting (right) by fellow Bloomsbury Group artist Duncan Grant dates from 1911. (Copyright Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence Photo: Estate of Duncan Grant.)
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