ABSTRACT
Duncan Grant was the preeminent painter of the circle of artists and intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury group. The youngest of Bloomsbury’s founding generation, Grant was also its only man not to attend Cambridge University. His initial connection to the group was based on his homosexuality, which created a passionate bond first between Grant and his cousin, Lytton Strachey, and then with Strachey’s friend John Maynard Keynes. Together these three gay men were central to Bloomsbury’s initial cohesiveness. In the teens, Grant became the lifelong domestic companion of another Bloomsbury painter, Vanessa Bell. Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse they shared with Clive Bell, a prominent art critic and Vanessa’s husband, is today open as a museum of Bloomsbury art and design, and offers the best insight into the range of Grant’s work.
