Deathbed Drawing of Painter Vanessa Bell by Duncan Grant Found in Family Papers
A pencil and ballpoint pen portrait of the painter Vanessa Bell, drawn by her fellow artist Duncan Grant around the time of her death in 1961, has come to light in family papers. The Art Newspaper reported the find on 4 November 2026.
The drawing was found during research for a coming exhibition at Tate Britain, the national gallery of British art in London. It is executed in soft pencil and biro, the ballpoint pen. Grant dated it "Friday April 14." Bell had died a week earlier, on 7 April 1961, at the age of 81, at Charleston, the farmhouse in East Sussex in southern England where she and Grant lived and worked.
Artforum, the US art magazine, reports that the drawing is believed to be the last one Grant made of Bell. Artforum carried the news on 2 November 2026.
The drawing has been given to Charleston, the house-museum run by the Charleston Trust. It is part of a campaign called 50 for 50, which aims to bring 50 major works by the Bloomsbury group back to the farmhouse by 2030. That is the 50th anniversary of the trust. The Bloomsbury group was the circle of writers, painters and thinkers that gathered around Bell and Grant in early twentieth-century London.
Charleston plans to show the drawing in public for the first time in May 2027, when the farmhouse studio reopens after major conservation work. Visitors will be able to see it there.
Tate Britain's show, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury, opens on 12 November 2026 and runs until 11 April 2027. It includes more than 300 works, from portraits and still lives to landscapes and decorated furniture, ceramics and textiles. Charleston is the largest lender, sending the entire contents of Grant's studio. The new drawing will not hang in the galleries. It will appear only in the exhibition catalogue.
Bell and Grant had a daughter, Angelica, born in 1918. Grant outlived Bell by 17 years. He died in 1978 and was buried beside her in the churchyard of St Peter's in Firle, a village near Charleston.
For a family home that has spent years being restored, a drawing turning up in the family's own papers is a rare kind of news. The farmhouse will show it when its doors reopen.
