Grant, Duncan

Duncan Grant was a British painter and member of the Bloomsbury Group. Born in Inverness, Scotland, his earliest years were spent in India and Burma, before returning to England in 1894 to attend St. Paul’s school in London, where he was under the care of his aunt and uncle, the parents of Lytton Strachey. He attended the Westminster School of Art in 1902, and a few years after that met members of what was to become the Bloomsbury Group. After a year in Paris he returned to London to become a regular at Bloomsbury gatherings, and in 1911 he worked on his first major commission. From 1914 on he lived and worked with Vanessa Bell, a relationship that would last nearly fifty years despite the fact she was married to Clive Bell. During World War I Grant was a pacifist who was eventually recognized as a conscientious objector. His first one-man exhibition was in 1920, and until the late 1930’s he was recognized as one of the most important British artists. He travelled widely with Vanessa Bell in Europe, and continued painting and travelling after her death in 1961. He died in 1978.