South East Hidden Paintings

Hidden away in the countryside, in the shadow of the South Downs, this

farmhouse is being woken from its winter's sleep. And the paintings

inside reveal secrets and about the people who lived here. The artists

who loved and lost, but led This corner of Sussex became the

focal point for the greatest painters and writers of the 20th

century. The Bloomsbury set, including a ground-breaking

novelist, an eccentric painter and her gay lover. Virginia Woolf,

Vanessa Grant and Duncan Grant. What was created here at Charleston

had a far reaching influence on how we view art. Not just in the south-

east, but across the whole world. The pictures they chose to paint

reveal so much about their characters and their extraordinary

legacy that they left behind. But not everything is on show. Just

like any gallery, some paintings have rarely seen at the light of

day. In this programme, we shine a light on the works of art hiding in

I'm Katherine Raywood. I'm an interior designer. I live in Sussex,

and Charleston's art has been an inspiration. So I am going behind

closed door to discover to discover the treasures of Bloomsbury, in the

most surprising of places! Oh, my goodness! Look at that! My journey

is part of a new project. The BBC has joined forces with the Public

Catalogue Foundation to show the nation's collection of oil

paintings on line. There are thousands of paintings, in museums

and art galleries, owned by you and me, that aren't on display. I am

I am starting the search for hidden art at Charleston, as near Lewes.

First, there's work to be done. Look at that beautiful needlepoint!

Wow! Today, Maggie and an army of volunteers are getting ready to

reopen Charleston Farmhouse for to the public for the spring. The

House draws visitors from around the world, keen to explore the

country home of the Bloomsbury Group, as it was in the past.

That's beautiful, right there. Last autumn, every every piece of art

was carefully covered up to protect them from damage During the winter

months. Some of the paintings are coming out of storage to go on

display. Let me have a look at that This is Duncan Grant's bedroom. He

used do this for years and years, didn't he? That right. Everything

here's wrapped up for the winter every year, painstakingly unwrapped

in time for the spring? Everything is cleaned and covered, either with

the tissue hats off the dust sheets, and the textiles under the sheet

have got acid-free tissue on them as wellto protect them. When you

uncover them, everything is ready. They've been protected for the

winter. Does it feel like the house is breathing a lovely sigh of

relief to be opened up again? Does it feel like that? I think so. The

colour disclose when you uncover it, because they've been veiled for the

winter. When you uncover it, it looks better than ever. The colours

just seemed to hit you. You get used to it all again. Is it nerve-

racking, or have you done it so many times now, you're not worried

about breaking things? No, I think if you start to worry, then

accidents happen. You just have to be safe. There's a good reason for

wearing white gloves. These precious artefacts have an amazing

history. In 1916, Charleston became home to a very unconventional

household. Vanessa Bell moved here, not with her husband, Clive Bell,

but with her lover and fellow artist, Duncan Grant, who was gay.

Vanessa's sister, Virginia Woolf, who was later to take her own life,

Vanessa Bell came from a privileged London background, and her and

Duncan Grant's ideas about art were radical. They painted everything

and anything in sight. Their use of colour was bold and ground-breaking.

They offered up a challenge to Victorian morality, and were far

ahead of their time. One of the rooms that had already been

unwrapped a offers clues to their complex lives. And into the studio.

This is the most amazing room, because Charleston Farmhouse feels

quite dark and cosy and room-like, but then you come into the studio,

and all of a sudden, they're huge windows letting in all of this

You can see why Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell spent nearly every day

in here painting and talking to each other. There are some

fantastic paintings in here. This one is very special. It's a self-

portrait of Duncan Grant when he was a young man up. Look how

handsome he was. He was renowned for being utterly beautiful And

utterly charming. Practically everyone he met fell madly in love

with him. Talking of which, under that, we've a portrait by Duncan

Grant of Adrian Stephen, who was Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf's

brother, but also Duncan Grant's lover. You can see how that got

What else have we got here? Look at this fabulous picture. This is a

portrait of the Vanessa Bell by Duncan Grant. I love the face in

here. There's something really special about artists' studios

anyway, and it's so wonderful to come in here and see all of the oil

paintings, and the little clues around us to how the pair of them

live their lives here. It's really Vanessa Bell's granddaughter,

Virginia Nicholson, has happy memories of Charleston. I remember

Duncan sitting there with an easel. Do you? Yes. I was only six when

Vanessa died, but I do remember her well, because we came here when I

was 12, every summer holiday, for sometimes six weeks at a time. And

there was my grandparents, Vanessa and Clive, and Duncan, and I

suppose, I never had any idea that that was a bit unusual, that I had

three grandparents and not the usual two On that side of a family!

You were just lucky! It was a bonus! Virginia remembers being

painted by both Duncan and finesse that in the Charleston studio. She

was not an easy subject. Vanessa dreamed up a way of getting my

attention and stopping me fidgeting, and the St "can I see? Can I see?".

I desperately wanted go the other side of the easel, and you'd see

them dabbing away. What did she do? What she did was look at the

pictures on the walls behind her in the studio, and tell stories about

them. So I used my imagination and started telling her stories. The

hour would pass. She did have a lovely, imaginative relationship

with her grandchildren. Duncan, no relation, but he might as well have

been a grandfather. There was something very innocent, very

childlike about him that children responded to. He had a kind of

almost naivety, a sort of innocence about him. He adored anyone who was

involved in painting or drawing, and we did nothing else as

children! He just thought that was Wow! Are these Duncan Grant's

glasses? So brilliant. Look at Oh, it's Angelica! Hello, Angelica!

There she is! Hello! She's come out for the spring! Angelica Bell was

Duncan and Vanessa's daughter. It's great to see this painting on

display, but not all Charleston's art is on sho. I am interested in

tracking down a portrait of Julia Stephen, who was Virginia Woolf's

and Vanessa Bell's mother. A haunting figure who cast a shadow

over their lives. Curator Wendy Hitchmow has brought the portrait

out of storage, as it's never been on display at Charleston. This is a

painting of Vanessa's mother? This Is Julia Stephen, mother of

Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf.and not painted by Bell or grant? No,

by a very famous Victorian painter called Frederick Watts. And as far

as we know, it was never hung at Charleston. So there was a very

special relationship between Virginia and Vanessa and their

mother? Was she inspirational to them? I think it was a bit of a

double edged sword. On one hand, she really represented the

Victorian womanhood. She was committed to good work, to nursing

the sick, helping the poor, so she represented all of those things,

the angel in the House that Virginia Woolf had to kill off in

order to fight in that room of one's own. -- write. On the other

hand, Julia Stephen represented a fantastic creative legacy. Her aunt

Sarah entertained everyone from Gladstone and Disraeli to Tennyson,

Rossetti. That is a fantastic feminine powerhouse. Is there some

sort of significance for the beautiful red dress? The red

dresses very interesting and very important. Julia Margaret Cameron

photographed Julia Stephen extensively in 1867 always wearing

that dress. You began to wonder whether she had another dress!

Perhaps she didn't! So then, there were images of Virginia Woolf in a

similar red dress as well. When Virginia Woolf was photographed for

Vogue, the vogue Hall of fame around 1925, she was photographed

wearing her mother's dress, although, yes, I'm no! If you were

going to be photographed for Vogue, Are there any occasions of Vanessa

wearing it as well Or wearing red? Yes, and that's very interesting.

She took one of Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs of her mother,

and from that, made a portrait of Judea Stephen that was also sort of

a self-portrait. That portrait is now in the reserve collection at

Brighton Museum. And hidden and not I am intrigued to tracker down, so

are have come to Brighton Museum and Art Gallery to find Vanessa

Bell's portrait of her mother that has been in storage for years, but

Jenni Lund is taking me behind Under here, big locks and keys!

Well, here it is. Hidden in the Bells of the Brighton Museum and

Art Gallery. This is Vanessa Bell's dress from 1929. So it's by Vanessa

Bell. It's a portrait of the artist's mother, who we know was

Julia Stephen. Do you think that the red is very significant Here?

Yes, I do. I do think that she is translating this black-and-white

image into this very powerful artistic expression. Showing the

playfulness of the light falling on the red dress. It's very beautiful.

If I didn't know, I would think it was a painting of Vanessa Bell.

It's quite uncanny, really.her grea yes, she is almost incorporating

her mother and her great aunt into herself portrayed. -- self-

portrait. Yes. I love the wooden frame on it as well. It's

completely different to all the other pictures round here. Is it

going to stay like that when it goes on display? Yes. It'll stay

like that. And I think the frame fits very well with the quite feel

of the painting itself. The what painting of Julia Stephen in

Charleston has just arrived, and Janet Brough is finally giving it a

frame. It too is having a rare moment on display at Brighton's

exhibition, Radical Bloomsbury. fits! Let me just put that on the

easel. Look at that! What a difference. What a difference a

frame makes! She looks terribly grand. She really is. She's

vulnerable and fragile. And now she is fit to go out! Fits for a great

exhibition as well. That's amazing, Back at the gallery, the Vanessa

Bell's painting of her mother is finally coming into the light under

the close direction of Jenni. careful about the bench behind you

there. The moment of truth. Brought up from the lower basement. And now

up on to the first floor. How exciting it back it's on. Is it on?

Wow. Happy? Happy. She looks like she should have lived here all

along. She's this wonderful welcoming presence to everybody

who's going to come into the exhibition. Yes. It's so exciting

to take paintings out of storage. Is it? Even though you've been

doing this for years? It's still an exciting feeling? Yes because you

get a new life when the space around you changes. I think she

And how great to see both paintings on display after years of being in

storage. I wonder what Julia Stephen would have made of the

impact of her daughters, a Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, had on the

Back at Charleston, volunteers are hard at work sprucing up the house

for spring. Think of all the very famous people would have sat in

these chairs. Charleston became a country retreat for the Who's Who

of society. How is that? Guests included the economist John Maynard

Keynes, artist Roger Fry, author Ian Forster, and of course,

I am a massive fan of Virginia Woolf. Her novel, To the Lighthouse,

was voted one of the top 100 reads of the 20th century. It was

Virginia who helped Duncan find Charleston, because she lived near

by at the time. She wrote to Vanessa at the point she found the

house. "The house is very nice, with large rooms, and one room with

big windows, fit for a studio. The house once doing up, and the

wallpapers are awful! But it sounds a most attractive place for, and

only four miles from us, so you won't be badgered by us! "There's

absolutely no doubt that they were drawn to Charleston because of the

beauty of the surrounding However, there's another very good

reason why they chose the farmhouse. Because Grant was a conscientious

Moving to the Sussex farm in the middle of the First World War was

one weight for Duncan to be sent to the front. This didn't go down well

with the locals. In 1941, in the midst of the second world war,

Work on a collection of paintings destined for the nearby church at

Berwick. It was one way to build a bridge with their neighbours but

with the Charleston household involved, controversy was never far

Wow! This is amazing. It's been said before that looking into

Berwick Church is a bit like stepping out of England and into

Italy. I can certainly see why. It's not hard to imagine why these

paintings came as a shock to the These two paintings here on the

side are Vanessa's. Vanessa Bell. We've got, the denunciation, over

here, which is Angelica, who's the model for Mary. And the very

beautiful angel Gabriel his Angelika's best friend, who she met

at drama school. She's called Chatty Salomon. Such a brilliant

name! Over here, we've the Nativity, which is really lovely, and again

we've Angelica as Mary, and apparently the model for the baby,

the baby looks very much like Quentin and Julian Bell, Vanessa's

I look at these and I think he must have been quite sad and quite

poignant for Vanessa or to paint these, because it was only three

years ago that she had lost her son Julian, who was of fighting in the

Spanish Civil War. Of course, the junior war had only just taken her

life as well. -- of the genial This must have stirred up lots of

the motions as she was painting them. Behind me up here, we've

Christ on the cross, which was painted by Duncan Grant. That's

really striking and quite a scary image. They're Post-Impressionist

colours, with the orange and the blue. A little bit frightening. In

a funny kind of way, I prefer Vanessa's paintings. But over here,

the huge one, and the one that knocks you for six as you come in,

was Christ in Glory. Again painted by Duncan. I love this one as well.

I like the voluptuous cherubs, again all models, all friends of

Angelica's. It's really touching. I think it's an amazing thing to do.

I am sorry that they upset some of the villagers, because I think

Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were really trying hard to make amends

So how on earth did this project get off the ground? We know that

forward-thinking Bishop Bell commissioned Duncan and Vanessa to

paint the murals, but why? Clues to their origins can be found in

Eastbourne. Some of the original sketches are held at Towner, the

Teri Hansen has invited me behind the scenes. They had quite a lot of

baggage with them, didn't they? Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. I

wondered whether the villagers didn't like the idea of wild,

louche artists being let loose on their precious church. That had an

impact. I think the worst thing was that they were known for that

lifestyle. Yes, some of them were atheists, but don't forget they

were pacifists. This was a very sensitive time politically for

Britain. And they were being let into the church and painting the

walls of a really ancient church. It goes back to the 12th century.

But Bishop Bell was very adamant. He didn't want the Church to be

like a mausoleum Or a traditional stone just standing there. It had

to have a living purpose. That living purpose was to encourage

parishioners to come in through very difficult and very unstable

All they had to do was sit down in the pews and look around them, and

see that Christian narrative just all round them. Just to look and

read for themselves. In the beautiful colours. They made these

small sketches. By I presumed they didn't immediately jump on to

canvas. Did they do larger sketches? Yes they did, actually. I

have more to show you over here. That exciting. On one of your

racks? On one of my racks! Are you ready for this? I am! Oh my

goodness! Look at that! Is this a life-size, or real to the size of

Jesus in Berwick Church? Pretty much. It's quite different from the

finished article. The original sketches were considered, Christ

was considered to look too fleshy, to real, too attractive, too

handsome, and the idea was to make We've the model, slightly

contraposto there. He didn't quite get into the position that Duncan

wanted. The story goes that he tied him to his easel and applaud him

would lot of whisky until the So he had that look of... Drunk,

basically. Yes. He's probably had a few there. And tied to his easel?!

Tied to his easel until he finished. He was a devil! Hearing all the

complications of his love life with Vanessa Bell, I'm surprised he

isn't considered the villain of the story. No, never. Despite his many

love affairs. He had relationships with Vanessa's family, didn't he?

He did. He was quite notorious. He was faithful to Vanessa in his way.

He always came home. A friend of Quentin's said that this made the

home so perfect for him that he'd just want to come home. So he just

went off. Yes, he had affairs with other men, but she accepted this,

and loved him. I really believe that he loved her in his way. He

was just so very attractive. He was a very attractive younger man. He

just had this charisma. He was like the Cary Grant of Sussex. Nobody

The Sussex that so influenced Duncan and Vanessa still inspires

local artists today. I like to brush up on my painting skills, so

I am joining a class in Lewes, where budding artists are having a

go at oils. Today's subject is... Make it a little bit lighter. This

artist is showing me the ropes. Keep working at an to you have much

it. It is harder than it looks. But what is it about red that is so

striking? Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant's paintings. There's a lot of

bright red. She loved wearing it. Sometimes what you wear... You

think people can express themselves more in their colours -- paintings?

When Devon League learning something. It has made me realise

that when I do my own paintings when I get the chance, you can

become quite obsessed with little tiny bits of it rather than looking

at it as a whole. Vanessa Bell at - - and Duncan Grant were good at

making these paintings that are fully of life, and beautiful marks

with the paint brushes, and yet, they look quite detailed and... It

I do not like this bit. I have ruined that bit pull stop no, you

haven't. Don't worry about it. Stop fiddling. Leave it, leave it!

I had done. What do that. The myth. Well done, you! Not a bad start,

but goodness knows what Vanessa and Duncan would have made of it. They

were prolific artist, and there art was not confined to canvas. They

painted ceramics, text dials and furniture. -- textiles. The

Bloomsbury group set up this workshop as a design enterprise. It

was not a huge success. The work was expensive and did did not last.

But it did help to establish art in its own right. They were far ahead

of their time. They were in the throes of a voyage of discovery.

They were discovering Post- Impressionism. No one knew about it

until they brought across those Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh. They

were brought across to the horror of the British public, who describe

them as a scrawling on the walls of a urinal. These are paintings that

the queue up to see at the Tate Modern or wherever. One of the

important things about Bloomsbury is that they were radical. They

moved to Sussex. To move with your homosexual lover, and not your

husband, was an extraordinary thing to do. They stood for toleration,

for the reason, are for pass a prison, for friendship, it has

taken us a long time to take to catch up. Thankfully, today, we

live in a world that tolerate homosexuality, but tolerate

minorities. We tolerate a lot of things that the boom Shreeve group

tolerated first. I have come to end of my journey, and what a privilege

to uncover so much of the art that is owned by you and me are the

public collection. But I do wonder what on earth Duncan and and the

LSO would have made of the fuss over their work. I do know, however,