Virginia Woolf

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Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry (1917)

I love this painting of Virginia Woolf. The faraway look in her eyes seems to encapsulate the myriad of thoughts that constantly swirled around in her head. She looks beautiful which would not be a common description of this great lady. It's such a shame that a generation of cinemagoers will only know of Virginia Woolf through the narrow portrait given in the film 'The Hours' where she comes across a dull and dour woman.
I would have so loved to have been a part of The Bloomsbury Group, those artists, philosophers, writers, and intellectuals who revelled in each other's company during the first half of the 20th century.
Fancy belonging to a group whose members included Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, E.M Forster, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey, and Leonard Woolf himself of course.

What the Bloomsbury Set would have thought of life today is anyone's guess. I think I would have preferred to live in an era of dramatic and important literary and artistic developments and to have had the pleasure of discussing these developments with a group of friends who were also so central to those discoveries.

Sadly, Virginia suffered from depression and ended her own life.
But I hope to learn more about her and in doing so celebrate her life.

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