Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group

“On or about December 1910, human character changed.” Here, Virginia Woolf, with characteristic humor, refers to the pivotal moment when artist and critic Roger Fry staggered London with his two Post-Impressionist exhibitions, marking the international development of modernism. Painters, novelists, and critics associated with Fry pioneered a distinctive visual style and a shift in cultural and societal attitudes; they were known as The Bloomsbury Group. 

At its core, Bloomsbury was a conversation—an artistic and intellectual dialogue that blurred the boundaries between painting and literature, criticism and creation. The Rollins Museum of Art holds an extensive collection of works by members of this collective, including Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Walter Richard Sickert. Portrait of a Movement: A New Approach to the Bloomsbury Group celebrates the debut of Fry’s Summer in the Garden (1911), a significant portrait of Vanessa Bell recently acquired by the museum and displayed in the United States for the first time. 

Amid renewed interest in the Bloomsbury Group’s artistic production, this exhibition builds on recent scholarship and ongoing revivals to offer a more nuanced interpretation of their work and activities. Resisting narrow biographical interpretations, it instead foregrounds the exchange of ideas, illuminating the group's dynamic dialogue with European modernism, gender, domesticity, and one another.

Image: Roger Fry (British, 1866-1934), Summer in the Garden, 1911, oil on panel, 19 x 23 1/8 in., Museum purchase from the Michel Roux Acquisition Fund. 2024.50. ©Roger Fry