Quentin Bell

Who was Quentin Bell?

Quentin Claudian Stephen Bell was an English art historian and author.

Bell was the son of Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell, and the nephew of Virginia Woolf. He was educated in London and at the Quaker Leighton Park School.

Principally an artist, as a potter, he was drawn to academia. Bell's biography of his famous aunt, Virginia Woolf: A Biography, 2 vols, won not only the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, but also the Duff Cooper Prize and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Award. He also wrote several books on the Bloomsbury Group and Charleston Farmhouse.

Bell became a Lecturer in Art History at the Department of Fine Art, King's College, University of Durham from 1952 to 1959, then Professor of Fine Art at the University of Leeds from 1959 to 1967. In 1964 he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University and, in 1965, Ferens Professor of Fine Art at the University of Hull. He was Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of Sussex from 1967 to 1975.

He was married to Olivier Bell. They had three children: Julian Bell, an artist and muralist; Cressida Bell, a notable textile designer; and Virginia Nicholson, the writer of Charleston: A Bloomsbury House and Garden, Among the Bohemians and Singled Out.