Painter. She was an English painter, the elder sister of well-known author Virginia Woolf, and a founding member of the Bloomsbury Group along with her sister, a brother, and others. The Bloomsbury Group was a very liberal group of writers, philosophers, and artists, who frequently met between about 1907 and 1930 at her home, the elaborate Charleston Farm House. The group's unconventional lifestyles and free-spirited attitudes, which were not readily accepted in Victorian England, were a powerful force in the growth of modernism. She was known for her colorful portraits, still-life paintings and for her dust-jacket designs. She designed all of her sister's book dust-jackets as well as those published at the family-owned publishing house, Hogarth Press. She was involved in the short-lived Omega Workshops, which specialized in interior design, and by 1912 she was the director of the group and held a solo exhibition there. She designed sets for ballets. Having a childhood in an upper-middle class Victorian household, she was the daughter of author Sir Leslie Stephen. At the time of her parents' marriage, her mother was a widow with three Duckworth children and Sir Stephen, a widower with a daughter. Besides the four step-siblings, she had three younger siblings. She was only 16, when her mother suddenly died from a complicated bout of influenza. In 1896 she began her art studies at Arthur Cope's School of Art in Kensington. In 1901 she entered the Royal Academy painting school, staying until her father died in 1904. After her father's death, the family home was sold and they moved to Bloomsbury. In 1905 she organized the Friday Club, a social group for painters, which met and exhibited together until about 1920, though Bell resigned from the group in 1914. She had her first solo exhibition in 1922 at London's Independent Gallery and exhibited her work regularly at galleries throughout the city. Her style of painting was at first post-impressionism but eventually became the bold colors of Abstract art. In 1906 her youngest brother died of a fever while in Greece. In 1907 she married the poet and art critic Clive Bell, who was also a member of the Bloomsbury group. In 1911 while on a trip in Turkey with her husband, she had a miscarriage followed by a deep depression from this tragedy and compounded by earlier ones, thus her sister Virginia came to nurse her. Shortly afterwards, she became involved romantically with Roger Fry, a well-known Bloomsbury artist. She had two sons with her husband, Julian and Quentin, and one daughter, Angelica, with her lover of fifty years, Duncan Grant, a well-known painter. During World War I, she was a pacifist, who was a member of the No-Conscription Fellowship, encouraging men to refuse to go to war. In 1932, she and Grant were commissioned to produce a dinner service with 50 plates for British historian Kenneth Clark. During the Spanish Civil War, her son Julian died in 1937 of wounds received while driving an ambulance that was bombed. That year before her marriage, her daughter, Angelica Bell, learned the identity of her biological father. During World War II, in September of 1940, her studio on Fitzroy Street was destroyed in the Blitz of London by a bomb. She and Duncan were commissioned to paint panels for RMS "Queen Mary II," but their finished piece was rejected. They provided the decorations in Berwick Church, which were finished in 1943. She lived for another twenty years after her sister's suicide, but in almost complete isolation from the public, yet enjoyed her children and grandchildren's visits to her studio. She died at the Charleston Farm House from respiratory failure. She was buried without a formal funeral. In 1978, upon his death, Duncan Grant was buried next to her. Though her work faded before her death, her work rallied with the 1976 publication of "Bloomsbury Portraits" by Richard Shone. In the 1980s the Charleston House began to be restored after having fallen into disrepair during the previous decades. It was opened to the public in 1986 and continues restoration into the 21st Century. There have been several books and films produced about her and her notorious life. In the summer of 2015, the BBC released a made-for-television mini-series, "Life in Squares," which told the story of the Bloomsbury Group.