Vanessa Bell Plein Air by Amanda White

Charleston Farmhouse was the idyllic Sussex country home of Vanessa Bell, the painter sister of Virginia Woolf whose own retreat, Monk's House was just four miles away. Bell moved into the property in October 1916, with her two children, her lifelong friend and sometime lover painter Duncan Grant, Grant's lover at the time, David Garnett, a nurse, a housemaid, a cook and Duncan's dog Henry. Over the years, the garden and its pond was the background and subject of many Bloomsbury paintings. So here's Vanessa in the garden, standing with her blank canvas ready for an afternoon's painting and there's Duncan by the pond, giving her a bit of inspiration!