The Tub
- Artist: Vanessa Bell
- Date: 1917
- Medium: Oil paint and gouache on canvas
- Dimensions: Support (confirmed): 1804 × 1666 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
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About this artwork
This is the “The Tub” by Vanessa Bell. Painted in 1917, it’s an oil and gouache canvas that measures a staggering 1804 × 1666 mm—roughly six by five and a half feet. The work was created in the summer after Bell, Duncan Grant and writer David Garnett moved into Charleston Farmhouse on the Sussex South Downs. It was meant to decorate the garden room, but never hung; the artist kept it folded and it lay hidden until the 1970s when Bloomsbury revivalists rediscovered it. The scene shows a woman in a tub, surrounded by a simple interior: a window, a vase, a small flower. Bell drew on the French masters she admired—Cézanne, Degas, Matisse—infusing the bath scene with a relaxed, almost cinematic quality. Originally partially clothed, the figure is now nude, with a trailing plait of hair that was added later. The painting captures the quiet intimacy of a domestic moment, a quiet slice of early twentieth‑century life.
See it in person
The Tub is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
