A portrait of Vanessa Bell drawn by Duncan Grant as she lay dying has come to light after decades out of sight, discovered while researchers were preparing a major Tate Britain exhibition on the two artists. The drawing, made at Bell's bedside in her final hours, is a rare and intimate record of the end of a creative partnership that shaped British modernism.

Bell and Grant were central figures in the Bloomsbury circle, collaborators and companions whose work and lives were closely entwined for more than forty years. Grant's sketch captures Bell in the last days of a life spent painting, and its rediscovery adds a poignant coda to the story of their friendship. The drawing was found during research for Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant: Inside Bloomsbury, which opens at Tate Britain on 12 November and runs until 11 April 2027.

The exhibition explores the world the pair built together, from their shared homes to the portraits and still lifes that defined their circle. The deathbed drawing will be included in the show, giving visitors a direct encounter with the closeness of their bond.

After the Tate run, the drawing will be donated to Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse that was Bell and Grant's home and is now a museum. It is expected to go on public display there in May 2027, joining the collection at the house where much of their life together unfolded. Bell died in 1961, and Grant, who lived until 1978, kept her memory alive at Charleston, the farmhouse where they had lived and worked together for decades.