Angelica Garnett

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Angelica Vanessa Garnett (née Bell ; born December 25, 1918 Charleston Farmhouse , Sussex , † May 4, 2012 in Aix-en-Provence , France ) was an English author and artist . The niece of the writer Virginia Woolf came from the circle of the Bloomsbury Group .

life and work

Angelica Vanessa Garnett was the daughter of the painter Vanessa Bell (nee Stephen ), the sister of the writer Virginia Woolf, and Clive Bell . However, her biological father was the homosexual painter Duncan Grant , with whom her mother had a love affair. However, Clive Bell showed understanding and willingly allowed Angelica to bear his name and regard him as a father lest she would be disinherited from his conservative family. Angelica did not find out about her true parentage until she was seventeen, although she lived with Grant and her mother at the Charleston Farmhouse, where she had also grown up. As a small child, Angelica was sickly and grew up without a direct reference person, but enjoyed the undivided admiration of her “home”, which consisted exclusively of adults: she had a grandfather friend and two much older half-brothers in Roger Fry , who was also a lover of her mother : the poet Julian Bell , who died in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and the later art historian Quentin Bell (1910–1996).

Charleston Farmhouse
Gravestones of Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell and a plaque for Angelica Garnett in St Peters Church, Firle, East Sussex

Angelica attended the Longford Grove School in Essex from 1929 , studied art, literature and history and made trips to Paris and Rome . Despite objections from her parents, she married the writer David Garnett in 1942 , who had previously had a relationship with her father Duncan Grant. The marriage had four daughters: the actress Amaryllis Virginia (1943–1973), the writer Henrietta Catherine Vanessa (* 1945) and the twins Nerissa Stephen († 2004), a painter, photographer and ceramicist, who were born in 1946; and the daughter Frances, called "Fanny". His marriage to Garnett eventually fell apart and was divorced in 1961; in the same year the mother Vanessa died and Angelica spent a lot of time with her father Duncan in Charleston. When Duncan died in 1978, Angelica took over the Charleston Trust , managed the family archives, and opened the property to the public as a museum.

Angelica Garnett lived in Forcalquier in the south of France for the last 30 years of her life . She died at the age of 93.

Angelica Garnett's main work is the 1984 memoir Deceived with Kindness (German title "Freundliche Taulungen"), which deal with her disoriented, sometimes stressful childhood in a promiscuous home determined by open relationships . Her somewhat bitter viewing of popular artists Bell, Grant and Woolf, and the Bloomsbury Group in general, was met with controversy by the public.

Publications

  • Deceived with Kindness ; at Random House UK, 1995 reprint, ISBN 0-7126-6266-9
  • Friendly deceptions ; German translation by Fischer Taschenbücher, Frankfurt 1993, ISBN 3-596-11428-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charleston news - Angelica Garnett: 25th December 1918 - 4th May 2012
  2. ↑ Angelica Garnett  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , brooklynmuseum.org, accessed December 2, 2012@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.brooklynmuseum.org  
  3. ↑ Frances Spalding: Angelica Garnett obituary in: The Guardian , May 7, 2012, accessed May 8, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Garnett, Angelica
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Garnett, Angelica Vanessa; Bell, Angelica Vanessa (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English writer and artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleston Farmhouse , Sussex, England
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 2012
Place of death Aix-en-Provence , France