Seated female nude

A woman alone in her bedroom, naked or partly dressed, is the theme of several early paintings by Vanessa Bell. These include The bedroom, Gordon Square, 1912 (Adelaide) and the large The tub, 1917 (Tate, London). They are usually meditative, bearing an element of self-portraiture in mood rather than in the physical appearance of the figure. The present work, unpublished and possibly unexhibited since it was painted, is more tightly conceived in spatial terms than the other works on this theme. The narrow bed with its white sheet and pillow, the washstand and the seated woman coiling her hair, are pressed into a relatively confined space bounded at the right by emphatic verticals, characteristic of many of Bell's works. Even the reflection of the room's walls and ceiling in the table mirror closes down the composition rather than, as might be expected, opening it up. The painting suggests a moment of personal withdrawal from a perhaps busy household. The mood - but not the details - puts one in mind of that scene in Bell's sister's novel Mrs Dalloway when the eponymous heroine goes upstairs to her bedroom and leaves behind the distractions of the day, to attend to herself rather than to others.

R.S.