The Rollins Museum of Art owns a collection of superb examples of works by members of the Bloomsbury Group, a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists in the early 20th century, most based in London. Among them are Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Walter Richard Sickert. Together, the group was key in the development of modern art. The painting functions as documentation of Fry’s relationship with Bell and as a beautiful study of color, pattern and form.

The Rollins Museum of Art looks forward to staging an exhibition curated around this group, slated for Summer 2025, where it will debut the recently (November 2024) acquired painting, Summer in the Garden (1911) by Roger Fry. Acquired from Philip Mould & Company, based in London, the painting has never before exhibited in the U.S.

Study of Vanessa Bell Reading

The significance of Summer in the Garden is enhanced by a work currently in the collection of the Rollins Museum of Art. In 2000, the museum received Study of Vanessa Bell Reading, painted by Fry in 1912. This unfinished study shows Bell wearing the same blue dress and orange coat. Although in the museum’s piece it is hard to decipher the background, there are some suggestions that the figure could be outdoors with areas of blue and green around the figure’s head. In the study, Bell appears to be reading whereas in the painting it seems she is sewing.

The acquisition of this work significantly expands the Bloomsbury collection and the 20th century holdings, one of the museum’s collecting priorities. It provides entry points for discussions about relationships, love, mental health, artistic movements, women’s roles in society, and modernism. In the context of the exhibition, this new addition will activate dialogues with portraits of other members of the Bloomsbury group and will highlight the significance of the group’s artistic legacy.

THE ROLLINS MUSEUM OF ART