A Garden Scene

This mural painting is one of a set of five given to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Mr. Raymond Mortimer in 1953. All five paintings came from the sitting room of 6 Endsleigh Place, London, WC1, where they had formed part of that room's interior decoration since their execution in 1925.

The murals were designed by Vanessa Bell (1879-1961) and Duncan James Corrowr Grant (1885-1978). According to Mr Mortimer, this particular mural was painted by Bell. Bell and Grant worked together on many interior decoration schemes for private patrons. The only ones still surviving in their original setting are the mural decorations (1940-42) at Berwick Church, Sussex and the rooms at nearby Charleston, Firle (which became Bell's country home in 1916 and after her death was preserved by a trust for the public benefit).

In addition to her proficiency as a painter, Bell was also accomplished in producing textiles, ceramics, painted furniture, and book jackets (designed for the Hogarth Press). This ability and interest in working in a variety of media was largely fuelled by her involvement in the Omega Workshops, an organisation founded by Roger Fry (1866-1934) in 1913 to enable artists fired by post-impressionism to apply their gifts to the decorative arts. Bell, together with her sister the writer Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), was also an active member of the literary and artistic circle known as the 'Bloomsbury Set'.