Tafelservice berühmter Frauen

The Famous Women Dinner Service is a set of 50 dinnerplates, each hand-decorated by Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The set was commissioned without a brief by art historian and museum director Kenneth Clark in 1932, and was made between 1932 and 1934. The dinner service represents 48 women from history, with another two plates that depict the artists, and has been recognised as a "bold, feminist statement", cementing Bell and Grant's "seminal role in feminist art history".

The dinner service predates American artist Judy Chicago's 1979 The Dinner Party by 45 years.

The dinner service is on permanent display at Charleston Farmhouse in East Sussex.

Background

The Famous Women Dinner Service by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant on display at Piano Nobile in 2018.

Kenneth Clark was appointed as Director of the National Gallery in London in 1932, and not long after his appointment he attended a dinner held by New York art dealer Joseph Duveen, during which a meal was served on a lavish Sèvres dinner service, made for the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. This inspired him to commission a dinner service from artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, whose Omega Workshops design collective was well known and admired. There was no brief. Clark's wife Jane (1902–1976) oversaw the production, communicating regularly with Bell.

Design

Bell and Grant sourced plain white Wedgwood plates, and were free to decorate them in whatever manner they chose. They settled on the representation of famous women from history, divided into four groups of twelve: ‘Women of Letters’, ‘Queens’, ‘Beauties’, and ‘Dancers and Actresses’. The Plates have hand-painted portraits of the head and shoulders of the women, with their name and a decorative border. The artists did not sign the plates.

Women of Letters

• 1. Jane Austen (1775–1817)
• 2. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) and her dog Flush
• 3. Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855)
• 4. George Eliot (1819–1880)
• 5. Fanny Kemble (1809–1893)
• 6. Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973–c. 1014 or 1025)
• 7. Dorothy Osborne (1627–1695)
• 8. Christina Rossetti (1830–1894)
• 9. George Sand (1804–1876)
• 10. Sappho (c. 630–c. 570 BCE)
• 11. Germaine de Staël (1766–1817)
• 12. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) (Vanessa Bell's sister)

Queens

• 13. Catherine the Great (1729–1796)
• 14. Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626–1689)
• 15. Cleopatra (70/69–30 BCE)
• 16. Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
• 17. Eugénie de Montijo (1826–1920)
• 18. Jezebel (died c. 843 BCE)
• 19. Marie Antoinette (1755–1793)
• 20. Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587)
• 21. Mary of Teck (1867–1953)
• 22. Queen of Sheba (c. 1000 BCE)
• 23. Theodora (c. 500–548)
• 24. Queen Victoria (1819–1901)

Beauties

• 25. Beatrice Portinari (c. 1265–1290)
• 26. Marian Bergeron (1918–2002) 'Miss 1933'
• 27. Sarah Churchill (1660–1744)
• 28. Pauline von Metternich (1836–1921)
• 29. Lola Montez (1821–1861)
• 30. Pocahontas (c. 1596–1617)
• 31. Rachel (Biblical figure)
• 32. Juliette Récamier (1777–1849)
• 33. Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862)
• 34. Agnès Sorel (1422–1450)
• 35. Helen of Troy (Greek mythology)
• 36. Simonetta Vespucci (1453–1476)

Dancers and Actresses

• 37. Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923)
• 38. Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo (1710–1770) La Camargo
• 39. Mrs Patrick Campbell (1865–1940)
• 40. Eleonora Duse (1858–1924)
• 41. Greta Garbo (1905–1990)
• 42. Nell Gwyn (1650–1687)
• 43. Dorothea Jordan (1762–1816)
• 44. Lillie Langtry (1853–1929)
• 45. Anna Pavlova (1881–1931)
• 46. Sarah Siddons (1755–1831)
• 47. Marie Taglioni (1804–1884)
• 48. Ellen Terry (1847–1928)

The Artists

• 49. Vanessa Bell (1879–1961)
• 50. Duncan Grant (1885–1978)

Subsequent history

It has been speculated that Clark might have been surprised by the commission, as he was expecting a more traditional full dinner service with a variety of plates and dishes. The dinner service remained in Clark's possession up to his death in 1983. The set was inherited by Clark's second wife Nolwen de Janzé-Rice (1924–1989, m. 1977), who took the service to her home in France. After her death, the set was then sold at an auction in Germany in the late 1980s. Following a Vanessa Bell monographic exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, in spring 2017 the owner of the dinner service contacted the Piano Nobile art gallery in London, which then helped to facilitate the sale of the set. In 2018 the collection was purchased by the Charleston Trust with grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund, as well as private donations. It was returned to Charleston where it is on permanent display in the Outer Studio.

Reception

The set has been described as "one of the foremost works of a then nascent feminist field of art", and that "the recovery of the Famous Women set makes clear its principal place in a feminist artistic tradition".

Judy Chicago's 1979 feminist work The Dinner Party is strongly reminiscent of the 1932–1934 Famous Women Dinner Service, both in nature and in theme, but it has been noted that "it is impossible to ascertain, and ultimately unproductive to speculate whether other artists, critics, and writers knew of [Bell's and Grant's] earlier efforts."

External links

• 'Decades Before Judy Chicago’s ‘The Dinner Party,’ Virginia Woolf’s Sister Made a Set of Dinner Plates Celebrating 50 Historic Women' Sarah Cascone, ArtNet