Painter, sculptor, potter, art historian and writer. Born in London, the younger son of Vanessa and Clive Bell, he was brought up among the artists and writers of the Bloomsbury Group. After leaving school at 17 he toured Europe with the art critic Roger Fry and studied painting in Paris and Rome. He became a member of the Euston Road School in the 1930s. In 1935 he went to the Burslem School of Art in Staffordshire to acquire the technical knowledge to make pots, believing that pottery was essentially a form of sculpture. He collaborated with his mother and Duncan Grant on a series of murals at Berwick church, near the family home at Charleston, East Sussex. His career in art education began at Kings College Newcastle in 1952, continuing with professorships at Leeds University (1962–67), Oxford University (Slade professorship 1964–65), Hull University (1965) and Sussex University (1967–75). He published widely on topics as diverse as fashion, the Pre-Raphaelites, John Ruskin, the history of art education, and ‘bad’ art. He completed an authoritative biography of his aunt, Virginia Woolf, in 1972. After retirement he concentrated on producing ceramic pieces. With his wife, Olivier, and sister, Angelica Garnett, Bell helped to establish the Charleston Trust that ensured the preservation of the family home, which had been decorated by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and which now displays several of his own pots and sculptures, namely, The Spink (carved brick, c.1930), Leaning Female Figure (ciment fondu, 1954), Pomona the Lemon Gatherer (ciment fondu and glazed terracotta, 1954) and Levitating Lady (fibreglass facsimile of 2004 from an original of c.1973).
Bibliography: J. Seddon et al, Public Sculpture of Sussex, Liverpool, 2014, pp. 43, 44–45; C. Saumarez Smith, ‘Bell, Quentin Claudian Stephen (1910–1996)’, ODNB (online edn), 2004; F. Spalding, ‘Obituary: Professor Quentin Bell’, The Independent (online edn), 18 December 1996.
Jill Seddon, Peter Seddon and Anthony McIntosh, 2014