ART; IN FULL BLOOMSBURY ENGLAND'S 20TH-CENTURY TALENT GOES ON DISPLAY.

Byline: Janette Williams Staff Writer

The Bloomsbury group, the set of early-20th century painters, intellectuals and writers who lived for art, literature and each other, is the subject of a new exhibition at the Huntington Library.

``The Art of Bloomsbury'' for the first time traces the artistic development and relationships of painters Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, three of the influential group whose members included novelists Virginia Woolf - Bell's sister - and E.M. Forster, economist John Maynard Keynes, biographer Lytton Strachey and art critic Clive Bell.

The exhibit, organized by the Tate Gallery in London, will inaugurate the library's new $3.6 million MaryLou and George Boone Gallery in its only West Coast showing.

``Most people are more familiar with the literary aspects than the visual, artistic aspects of Bloomsbury,'' said Edward J. Nygren, director of the Huntington's art collections. ``Yet persons such as Roger Fry or Clive Bell were extremely important in bringing modern art to England. It's hard to believe the exhibition Roger Fry mounted in 1912, introducing pictures by van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and Gaugin to the British public, was resoundingly received with outrage. The public really was horrified by that art.''

In 1913, Bell, Fry and Grant established the Omega Workshops in an effort to provide employment for artists influenced by the post-impressionist movement - a term coined by Fry. By the time Omega was discontinued in 1919, experts say, it had made a significant and permanent change on aesthetic life in Britain. The Bloomsbury group is thus often credited with being a catalyst in the formation of modern British taste.

In a sense, the Bloomsbury set - which took its name from the London district where the principals lived and worked - was ahead of its time socially as well as artistically, Nygren said.

``Free love, irreverence, (disdain for) bourgeois morality - they were extremely liberal in their art and their thinking,'' Nygren said. ``In a sense they were the wave of the future.''

Admiration for Bloomsbury is not universal, and in Britain, where the group is sometimes considered overrated, tiresomely self-absorbed and elitist, the Tate's exhibition drew some critical pans.

``I think that's more an English perception than an American,'' Nygren said. ``They came from a fairly privileged background, and obviously there would be that possibility concerning class differences. But in terms of their elitism ... they were very open to suggestions and very open as a group - people came and went, there were differences of opinion, there was not a single ideological viewpoint.''

Although the critical reception in England was ``hardly wonderful,'' the exhibit was well-attended, Nygren said.

``A lot of it has never been shown publicly ... and they spent 10 years doing rather astounding things,'' Nygren said. ``It was a different world.''

More than 150 of the three artists' paintings and decorative arts covering five decades will be featured in the exhibit, which continues through April 30. It will then move to its only other U.S. stop, the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Conn.

THE FACTS

--What: ``The Art of Bloomsbury.''

--Where: The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino.

--When: Hours are noon to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through April 30.

--Admission: $8.50 for adults, $8 for seniors, $6 for students ages 12-18, and free for children under 12. Admission is free to all visitors on the first Thursday of every month. Call [phone] or visit the Web site at www.huntington.org.

GARAGE GROWS INTO MUSEUM

Using the single largest gift in the Huntington Library's history, Henry Huntington's garage has been transformed into the new MaryLou and George Boone Gallery now housing the ``Art of Bloomsbury'' exhibit.

The San Marino dentist and his wife, longtime supporters of the Huntington, donated $3.6 million for the conversion of the 1911 Carriage House, northwest of the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery in a part of the grounds never before open to the public.

The 7,200-square-foot building now provides 4,000 square feet of space for changing exhibitions, and four more acres of the grounds are now open to visitors with completion of the new Dorothy Collins Brown Garden fronting the new gallery and linking it to the Scott gallery.

When work started in late 1997, the garage was full of lawn mowers and garden tools rather than Huntington's fleet of automobiles - which had included Loziers, Locomobiles, an Abbott-Detroit, a Hupmobile and even an electric car he liked to drive around the estate.

And although, being Huntington's garage, it was larger and grander than most homes and was designed by Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, no one was sure restoration and conversion were possible until the Boones paid for an initial study.

Now the exterior of the garage has been finished with a new coat of plaster and paint, and badly damaged parts of the concrete balustrade and cornice have been repaired. Inside, the building is designed to accommodate different exhibition configurations, with flexible lighting systems and temporary walls.

Library director David S. Zeidberg said the new gallery will be used for future major exhibits, such as the Abraham Lincoln and George Washington shows, which have had to be housed in the library's permanent exhibition space; this will free more space to exhibit the library's permanent collection, he said.

- Janette Williams

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1) Duncan Grant's ``Vanessa Bell in a Sunhat'' (1914) is on view with other artwork at the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery through April.

(2 -- 3) Works by Roger Fry (``Edith Stillwell,'' 1915, above) and Duncan Grant (``Virginia Woolf,'' 1912) were often considered controversial.

Box: GARAGE GROWS INTO MUSEUM (See text)