Virginia Woolf - Art, Life and Vision... Plus

There's an exhibition about Virginia Woolf at the National Portrait Gallery at the moment that illustrates her life through portraiture and her writing. It starts off with photographs of her parents and family, early photos from the late 1800s, and moves on to focus on Virginia and her friends. She was at the centre of the development of writing and the arts in the early part of the last century so her circle of family and friends covered some of the most important artists of the day from critics like Roger Fry to poets like TS Eliot to artists like her sister Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant and they're all featured in the exhibition. Also featured, of course, is her husband, Leonard Woolf, who, amongst other things founded the Hogarth Press that published many of the more experimental pieces of writing of the time.

It's not a very large exhibition and many of the things on display are small so crowds tend to develop around the artefacts and paintings/photographs. It was nice that it was so busy on a random Thursday afternoon with a surprising number of older people intently looking at the exhibits. I don't think there's been an exhibition like this before - or at least in recent years - which might explain its popularity.

We see portrait photographs of the young Virginia Stephen, all posed as you'd expect of the late Victorians and photographs of Virginia throughout her life. Some are by friends at events of various types and others are by 'proper' photographers like Man Ray and Gisele Freund. I liked Gisele's photo of Virginia sitting on a big couch with her cocker spaniel Pinka at her feet. It's a rather domestic scene for someone with Virginia's intellectual reputation.

Two painted portraits are side by side in the exhibition from what looks like the same sitting, one by Roger Fry and the other by Vanessa Bell (Vanessa's is used in the poster for the exhibition). The earliest portrait is by Duncan Grant with Virginia Stephen apparently sitting and chatting to her sister wearing her big Edwardian hat - according to the label Virginia came into the room while he was painting, sat down in hat and coat and started talking to Vanessa so he started painting her. It's a nice tale of unthinking intimacy that something was so important that she just had to talk to Vanessa about it straight away.

There are also photos and paintings of family, friends and accomplices, of Leonard and Vanessa, of her brother Adrian and nephew Julian Bell who died in the Spanish Civil War. There are portraits of people like Vita Sackville-West and Hope Mirrlees (who looks like a young Felicity Kendal to me). There's a lovely painting of Vanessa by Duncan Grant and a self-portrait by Dora Carrington.

As well as paintings and photographs there are a lot of other exhibits in the form of first edition books hand-printed by the Hogarth Press (such as a first edition of TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land') and some of Virginia's books with covers designed by Vanessa. It's nice to be able to see these on display. There's also the bust of Virginia by Stephen Tomlin and a small painting ('Weeping Woman') that Picasso donated rather than attend a benefit arranged by the Bloomsbury people to raise money for families affected by the Spanish Civil War. The saddest exhibits were her farewell letters to Leonard and Vanessa, presented together in one frame. There are also some oddities like the 'black book' that listed all the people Hitler wanted to be arrested on sight following the German invasion of Britain that included Virginia and Leonard's names.

There's a rather touching painting by Vanessa from 1943 called 'The Memoir Club' which features a selection of the great and good sitting round chattering away about art, politics and people. On the wall, are portraits of lost friends and members of the club - Virginia Woolf (and it's nice that it's Duncan Grant's early portrait of the young Virginia), Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry. Gone but not forgotten and, with Virginia's literary legacy, never to be forgotten.

It's a very interesting and thought-provoking exhibition and well worth seeing.

Virginia Woolf also features in another exhibition in London at the moment, the Books About Town festival of painted benches dotted around London and 'Mrs Dalloway' is one of the featured books. The 'Mrs Dalloway' bench is in Gordon Square in Bloomsbury and features a painting of Clarissa on the front and Septimus on the back. And here they are:

'UPROAR!' at The Ben Uri Gallery

The 'UPROAR!' exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery celebrates the first 50 years of the London Group of artists over 1913-1963. The title comes from the furore created by Mark Gertler's 'The Creation Of Eve' (opposite). Looking at the painting today it's difficult to imagine why it created so much outrage but it did. It shows God lifting Eve by her hair out of Adam, surrounded by lush grass and huge flowers. Shocking, I know.

The Ben Uri Gallery is just off Abbey Road (yes, Beatles fans, *that* Abbey Road) in what I assume was once a small shop. It's bijou, with the walls hung with paintings upstairs and downstairs in what was probably the storeroom. It's a small space but it's big enough in ambition to take on this exhibition and produce a heavy, glossy programme with all the paintings in the exhibition reproduced alongside short essays. Each artist represented in the exhibition has one painting or other work on display in chronological order, with the later works downstairs. One of my favourites of the later paintings was 'Kitchen Interior' by John Bratby from 1956 that I really wanted to touch to feel the splurges of paint layered on top of paint, ridges of paint behind the glass.

I really liked Duncan Grant's 'Window, South of France' from 1928 that is just that, an open window looking out on a lush and rolling landscape of fields leading down to the sea in the distance. The wall inside the house is covered in wallpaper with rich roses, bringing the garden inside the house, and a vase of poppies reflected in the open window.

This picture doesn't do it justice. The colours are much more vibrant when you see it in front of you with deep reds of the flowers and the greens of the fields are made up of many shades. It's a lovely painting and I'd love it on my living room wall.

It was nice to have Duncan's painting hung next to a small painting of a still life by Vanessa Bell, a bowl of apples a la Cezanne. Other Bloomsberries are represented in the exhibition, including Roger Fry's 'Portrait of Nina Hamnett' from 1917 (below) that I instantly saw was really Suzanne Vega - the resemblance was instantly noticeable to me, possibly because I was seeing Ms Vega that evening at the Barbican.

Another painting that drew my eyes was 'Rue Fontaine de Caylus, Marseilles' by Edward Wadsworth from 1922. It's quite a simple painting in one sense, with washing hung up to dry between the houses on either side of the street. The street descends as it goes deeper into the painting, with a single woman in the street. Who hung up all the washing?

The colour and shapes are what draw me in - sheets and shirts and pants, all hanging out to dry in the breeze. It must have been wet underneath those lines and lines of washing when they were first hung out. Again, I'd be quite happy to have that painting on my wall.

Another painting to name check is 'Self-Portrait' by Claude Rogers from 1938, a painter I've not heard of before. He's dressed in shirt, tie and jacket, looking out at the viewer and he could do with a shave. The interesting thing about it is that it could have been painted yesterday - the hair-cut, the clothes, the attitude, all could be from a hipster now. The only thing that dates it for me is the glasses. I can't find a copy of it online so you'll just have to go an see it for yourself.

All in all, it's a great little exhibition so you can dip your toe into the London Group. It's a brave move by the Ben Uri Gallery and I look forward to seeing what it does next.