IN 1961 MY MOTHER, Helen Yamey (1920-1980) was invited to exhibit some of her sculptures in the prestigious London Group (‘LG’) annual exhibition. The LG, founded in 1913, staged artists whose work was good, but too adventurous or experimental for the Royal Academy. It was the first group in Britain to actively promote Modernism in British art. Her warks were exhibited alongside those of now famous artists such as Frank Bowling, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Francis Newton Souza, Eileen Agar, Frank Auerbach, Duncan Grant, LS Lowry, Julian Trevelyan, and Vanessa Bell. Because of the last name mentioned, it was with great interest to me that we visited the exhibition of works by Vanessa Bell which was being held at the Milton Keynes Gallery until 23 February 2025.

Vanessa Bell (1879-1961), a niece of the famous Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, was in the final year of her life when the above-mentioned LG exhibition was held. It would be interesting to know whether she met my mother at this show. There is a small chance that this meeting might have happened because the LG exhibition was held in March 1961 and Bell died (of a brief illness) in early April that year.

The exhibition at Milton Keynes was well-curated and beautifully laid-out. In a series of interconnecting rooms, the visitor was able to follow Bell’s creative output from the beginning of the twentieth century until near the end of her life. The show demonstrates Bell’s great versatility as an artist.  One of the earliest of her paintings is a portrait of her father, Sir Leslie Stephen. It is an extremely competent painting in the style of the Old Masters. Soon after painting this, her style changed because of being influenced by the styles of early twentieth century European avant-garde artists. Her paintings began to acquire a tendency towards abstraction, but with a few exceptions on display at the exhibition, they never ceased to be even slightly figurative. In 1912, she exhibited her works in the Second Post Impressionist Exhibition alongside those of, for example, Matisse, Braque, and Picasso. A few of the paintings we saw reminded us of Modigliani.

Shortly before the outbreak of WW1, Vanessa moved out to Charleston in Sussex along with her husband Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, and Duncan’s lover David Garnett. She hired a cottage so that Duncan and David could work as farm labourers and thus avoid being conscripted into the military.  After WW1, when the more adventurous styles of what was then ‘modern art’ went out of fashion in the English art market, Bell’s paintings reverted to being more figurative in style. The exhibition includes many examples of art which were created collaboratively by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. These works include furnishings (many for decorating the house in Charleston) and ceramic works, including a series of 50 plates, each with a portrait of a famous woman. These were commissioned by the art historian Kenneth Clark and were all on display in the exhibition. Bell also designed many book covers, notably for her sister, the author Virginia Woolf,

Bell’s later paintings were all beautifully executed, many of them being depictions of domestic scenes. Although my favourites were her earlier paintings that tended towards abstraction, I was also very much taken by some of her later paintings executed in the 1950s. Having declared that, I must say that I am very pleased that I managed to see the wonderful exhibition at Milton Keynes in the ‘nick of time’.

Returning to my mother, whose works were exhibited in the same show as Vanessa Bell’s in 1961, you can read all about her and her activities at the forefront of British sculpture in the 1950s and early 1960s in my book “Remembering Helen: My Mother the Artist”, which is available from Amazon, e.g.:https://www.amazon.co.uk/REMEMBERING-HELEN-MY-MOTHER-ARTIST/dp/B0DKCZ7J7X/