Clive Bell

Arthur Clive Howard Bell (1881-1964) was an English critic, associated with the Bloomsbury group.

Clive Bell was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and came to London, where he met and married the artist, Vanessa Stephen (sister of Virginia Woolf) in 1907. By World War I their marriage was over, although they never officially separated: not only did they keep visiting each other on a regular base, they also kept spending holidays together, paid "family" visits to Clive's parents, and Clive lived for long stretches of time at Charleston with Vanessa, Duncan Grant and their (= Clive's, Vanessa's and Duncan's) three children.

Clive and Vanessa had two sons (Julian and Quentin), who both became writers, Julian dying in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Angelica Garnett wore Clive's last name until she married, but was in fact Duncan's daughter, which she learnt from her mother shortly after Julian's death.

Works

• Significant Form in Art (1914)
• Since Cézanne (1922)
• Civilization (1928)
• Proust (1929)
• An Account of French Painting (1931)
• Old Friends (1956)