12 Facts About Clive Bell

Arthur Clive Heward Bell was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group.

Clive Bell developed the art theory known as significant form.

Clive Bell had an elder brother, an elder sister (Lorna, Mrs Acton), and a younger sister (Dorothy, Mrs Hony).

Clive Bell's father was a civil engineer who built his fortune in the family coal mines in Wiltshire in England and Merthyr Tydfil in Wales – "a family which drew its wealth from Welsh mines and expended it on the destruction of wild animals.

Clive Bell was educated at Marlborough College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, studying history.

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Vanessa had begun a lifelong relationship with Duncan Grant, and Clive Bell had a number of liaisons with other women including Mary Hutchinson.

Clive Bell lived in London but often spent long periods at a farmhouse in Charleston, Sussex, where Vanessa lived with Duncan and her three children by Clive Bell and Duncan.

Clive Bell supported her wish to have a child by Duncan and allowed his wife's only daughter, Angelica, to bear his surname.

Clive Bell's was informed, by her mother Vanessa, just prior to her marriage and shortly after her brother Julian's death, that Duncan Grant was her biological father.

Clive Bell has been found wanting by biographers and critics of the Group – as a husband, a father, and especially a brother-in-law.

Clive Bell's reputation has led to his being underestimated in the history of Bloomsbury.

Clive Bell was at one point an adherent of absolute pacifism, and during the First World War was a conscientious objector, allowed to perform Work of National Importance by assisting on the farm of Philip Morrell MP, at Garsington Manor.