About
Charleston, home of twentieth century artists, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and their daughter Angelica Garnett, was the Sussex retreat of the Bloomsbury Group. It is now a successful house museum, and from April 2014 will host a series of Heritage Lottery-funded curatorial internships. This blog is a record of our work cataloguing, researching and interpreting the Angelica Garnett Gift from the Charleston attic – overlooked by a bust of Virginia Woolf.
The Charleston Attic 
It might interest you to know, re Grant and El Greco, that his large, superb oil on canvas copy of El Greco’s Laocoon (NGA Washington) is in Bryan Ferry’s collection.It was painted in the mid-1930s when the original El Greco was in Prince Paul of Yugoslavia’s collection (probably in London); Grant knew Prince Paul as a potential purchaser of his work for the Yugoslavia national collection but I have a feeling a work was not in the end purchased. I wonder if there is a photo of the Cardinal painting among the many reproductions of works of art at Charleston.
Grant was a great admirer of the El Greco bought by the National Gallery, London, after the First World war, a purchase that was thought very peculiar by more conservative observers.
Thank you for reading our recent post on Duncan Grant and El Greco. This is fascinating and really expands the scope of our recent research. Your readership is greatly appreciated.