Duncan Grant: A Biography by Frances Spalding Chatto & Windus 570pp, £20 in UK
To a portrait painter, the splendid photograph of Duncan Grant by Jane Bown, taken I imagine when he was already ninety, shows, at a glimpse, a complete portrait of the man: an alert, lovable old pagan still holding his brushes and his palette.
As is now the fashion, this biography has over 500 pages. Duncan's life has been thoroughly and endlessly researched. It is a monumental book, and I do not use the word loosely. It is concerned with a monument. Kenneth Clark taught me that if something is called miraculous, it must be concerned with a miracle - the same with the word fantastic and its concern with a fantasy. This is true also of the word monumental. For many years Duncan was a monument to English paintings. Whether he was a genius, or merely had a huge and inventive talent, is beside the point. He was a pivot which, to the ordinary man, exemplified an entire school of English painting: post-Sickert - who wasn't, of course, English - and pre-David Hockney.
In fact, Duncan was the artist who captured the whole Bloomsbury world of his time.
The connoisseur and art collector Bernard Berenson always referred to Bloomsbury as the "Gloomsbury set-up". His chief dislike was Roger Fry - the Bloomsbury prophet. This dislike was keenly felt by Duncan and Maynard Keynes when they visited the Berenson villa in Tuscany, I Tatti. Duncan Grant and Maynard Keynes were at that time lovers, on a sightseeing journey journey Italy and Sicily.
Apart from Duncan, and "Bunny" Garnett, it is astonishing how physically unattractive the males of the group, and even the most of the females, were. However, they all formed an unending and almost incestuous circle of bed-mates. When Duncan depicted them, there was no flattery, and often the portraits - even of people he loved, and there were many of them throughout his entire life, both male and female - verged on caricature.
Duncan was immediately attractive to everyone and could seduce by his interest in people, his immense generosity and detestation of everything that was bogus or pretentious. His circle consisted of "real" people, and there were a few women amateur artists thrown in. Even then, as Kenneth Clark - again - pointed out, the word amateur comes from amor, showing a love in what they did.
When Duncan was ninety, after a friendship of many years, I wanted to paint his portrait as a present for him. This was achieved at his delectable Sussex farmhouse, Charleston. Having completed two head sketches with a large hat shading his face, I gave them to him and at once he said: "But I must give you something in return."
I remonstrated, of course, and said I was there simply as a tribute and homage to him. "Oh well," he said, "if you don't want it I do understand." In the end, an enchanting out-of-door landscape became mine. This was such a typical example of Duncan's humility and generous behaviour. He allowed criticism of his work and could be urged in return to criticise mine.
The first written criticism I had was by Clive Bell, in a letter, after my first exhibition in the early Forties. Clive was an integral part of the whole Strachey and Stephen family group. He was married to Vanessa Stephen and was brother-in-law to the formidable Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen. So Clive's letter became for me an introduction to that unique world of artists and writers, a world that has been once more full explored, this time by Frances Spalding, in her excellent and un-put-downable book. Jane Bown's photograph appears on the end dustcover, and in a way it sums up Duncan more than his excellently painted self-portrait on the front dust cover. He does not flatter even himself.
Derek Hill is a painter