Oh, to Be a Painter!

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) was one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century. In addition to her groundbreaking novels, she was an admired literary critic and authored many essays, letters, journals, and short stories. With her husband, Leonard Woolf, she founded the Hogarth Press, which would publish some of the most important modernist texts of the twentieth century, including her own. Claudia Tobin is a writer, literary critic, curator, and art historian specializing in the relationship between modern and contemporary literature and the visual arts. She is the author of Modernism and Still Life: Artists, Writers, Dancers (2020) and coeditor of Ways of Drawing: Artists' Perspectives and Practices (2019). She worked on two major exhibitions exploring Virginia Woolf's life and art, Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision (National Portrait Gallery, 2014) and Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings (Tate St. Ives, Pallant House Gallery, and Fitzwilliam Museum, 2018), and has curated numerous exhibitions on contemporary artists. Tobin was awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Cambridge in 2017 and is a senior research associate at the Intellectual Forum, Jesus College, Cambridge. She is also a visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London.