Discovered: a lost possible inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway

A painting by Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell that went missing for 60 years will go on show in London in November

Clarissa Dalloway, the heroine of one of Virginia Woolf’s best-loved novels, is “always giving parties to cover the silence”. The story, Mrs Dalloway, closely follows a London society hostess as she prepares for an evening of sharing her hospitality while quietly battling a depressive illness. After Woolf’s tragic suicide in 1941, the novel’s theme acquired a sombre significance.

Now an enigmatic painting, one that had gone missing for 60 years and which is intimately linked to the book, has come to light. The picture, painted by Woolf’s sister, the artist Vanessa Bell, was given to Woolf just before she began to write early drafts of Mrs Dalloway, and is now to go on public display for the first time in almost 100 years. It depicts the glamorous guests at a party much like the occasion at the centre of Woolf’s novel.

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