4 mins
By Cressida Bell
Thirty years after my father’s death I am really delighted that Charleston in Firle are putting on a show of his work. There was a show in 1997 – called ‘A Man of Many Arts’ but this promises to be an even better full scale retrospective full of fascinating insights into the man and his art.
My childhood was filled with my father’s creativity. When my sister Virginia & I were little our bedroom walls were sponge printed by him in a white and blue chequered pattern covering the blue walls. At bedtime he would give me illustrated reading lessons with instant drawn renderings of rhymes like ‘the fat cat sat on a mat and ate a rat’. He made us fabulous birthday and Christmas cards with almost pre-Raphaelite details. My tenth birthday card was a fantasy landscape with a tower in a grove of trees surrounded by unicorns and a distant view of islands and clouds. If you looked carefully the tower had 10 floors, there were 10 unicorns and 10 trees each with 10 bunches of 10 fruit. It was all a beautiful (and educational) puzzle.
I’m sure I owe my own decorative flair to my father – as he was a skilled purveyor of pattern. I have numerous pieces of his pottery and many sculptures and figurines (he was nothing if not prolific). They are all richly decorated with endlessly inventive patterns. I adore his small painted pottery figures, mainly of reclining ladies in gorgeous, patterned dresses. Much of his work embodies his love of the classics and mythology. I have plates depicting Greek and Roman gods; Mars in a strange sort of gas mask, Neptune with a sailor’s cap, and Apollo wearing glasses and reading a book.
He also made massive sculptures at Charleston and for our home. In Leeds we had a huge concrete Goddess on the garden terrace, and in Sussex he managed to realise his dream of creating a full size lady floating parallel to the ground secured only by her hair and planted in a rose bed. This was a long term obsession, apparently sparked by a magic show he saw as a child where a woman appeared to float above the stage. He created endless versions of this vision – one of which can now be seen at Charleston in Lewes.
As a father he was a benign presence, somewhat disengaged from the tribulations of parenthood. He enjoyed the fun times with his children but left the hard work to my mother. He was always working on something – either a book, an article, his job as a professor or more likely in his studio creating some new fantasy. I was keen to follow in his artistic footsteps and often went with him to his pottery at Charleston to learn to throw and paint pots. He taught me how to draw and I would often emulate him on holiday when he would take out a sketchbook and depict his surroundings at the drop of a hat. He kept a holiday diary for each trip, which are full of his observations, comments and jokes. He had an uproarious sense of humour based mainly on slapstick and double-entendre – which my mother affected to disdain. My abiding memory of him on holiday is the image of him sat happily in a bar sipping something delicious while his women-folk aka ‘the centipedes’ went shopping, mainly for shoes.
As a student I would come home for the weekend and make a beeline for his studio to see what was new. On one occasion I found him making statuettes of birds, wearing spectacles and being ridden like a horse by an elegant lady! ‘What fresh madness?’ I thought – but he was as sane as ever. Later, when I embarked on my own career he was very supportive and we had a couple of exhibitions together. It was all due to him that I started painting lampshades. He was making elaborate sculptural lamps and helpfully shared the details of his lampshade manufacturer. I wanted to decorate my own shades – and in time my own lamps also. They could not be more different to his, but without him maybe I would never have embarked on what is now my most popular product.
Quentin was almost 50 when I was born so people often thought he was my grandfather. His own father, Clive Bell, is just a distant memory as he died when I was only four, but I know him as a rather posh bon viveur with monogrammed pyjamas and bespoke Smythson stationery. Quentin could not have been more different. Although he liked the good things in life – good food, nice wine, cigars and Algerian Coffee House coffee – he didn’t give a fig about his personal appearance and as far as I know never took a mistress.
With my mother Olivier Quentin gave fabulous annual parties to celebrate the end of the university year. His students starved themselves in preparation and Olivier made mountains of delicious food while Quentin prepared his notorious white wine cup, laced with brandy and very strong. In the ‘sixties these parties went pretty wild – but sadly I was not allowed to stay up for the late night high jinks. Later on I got to help to host these events which I consider to have been a vital part of my education as I have ever since adored giving parties!
The forthcoming exhibition is also a celebration of the fact that Quentin was the driving force behind the saving and restoration of Charleston. It was a very onerous task which took up much of his time and energy in his later years, but without him the house would probably have gone back to its owners, the Firle Estate, and all the painted walls have been obliterated.
‘Quentin Bell’ runs from 19th September to 12th March and will bring together over a hundred works – some from Charleston’s collection and many from public and private collections. The exhibition will offer a rare opportunity to encounter the full range of his career: from childhood invention to his mature works in ceramics, sculpture, painted objects and works on paper.
Needless to say his children (my brother Julian Bell and my sister Virginia Nicholson and I) have been involved with the show from the start. We asked friend and Quentin-scholar Matthew Holliday to curate the show. He is very keen to flag up that although Quentin is best known as the biographer of his aunt Virginia Woolf and a scion of the Bloomsbury group in fact he was also a brilliantly talented all-round artist.
