Preliminary design for Lady Hamilton Rug 1914

Vanessa Bell made this preliminary design for the Lady Hamilton Rug using watercolor, ink and pencil on graph paper. I’m really drawn to the way Bell works out her ideas. You can see the grid peeking through, reminding us that artmaking is often a process of mapping and planning. Looking at the surface, it feels like the paper is almost a skin, with thin washes of color. In the panel on the left, notice how the blocks of black, blue, and green bump up against each other. You can almost see Bell thinking, what happens if I put this color next to that one? It’s like a recipe, and she’s testing ingredients. I am reminded of Hilma af Klint, who also used geometric shapes and vibrant colors in her work. Like Klint, Bell invites us to consider art as a space of experimentation and visual thinking, where fixed meanings give way to open-ended possibilities.