Clive Bell's life changed in Paris in 1904. He had gone there with half-hearted intentions to conduct research for a Cambridge fellowship dissertation for which he had been awarded a scholarship, but he abandoned that when he found that the life led by artists and their models in Parisian cafés was far more to his liking. It was not until 1910, however, when he happened to meet Roger Fry on the railway platform at Cambridge that Bell's career found its true path as a tireless champion of modern art. By giving popular expression to the ideas of ‘significant form’ and ‘aesthetic emotion’, Bell would forever be associated with the upheavals caused in English cultural life by post-impressionist painting. When the Russian Ballet returned to London after the First World War, with sets and costumes designed by Picasso and André Derain, Bell was again at the forefront of explaining this radical new art to the public.

Throughout his life, Bell entered into controversies about the arts with gusto. Although in many ways his literary tastes tended more towards the eighteenth century, Bell remained committed to an ideal of aesthetic liberty, convinced and dedicated to convincing others that a society's freedom could be measured by its tolerance for unfamiliar art.

Dear Cornford,

Would you be willing to accept, vicariously, a word of thanks for Mrs. Cornford's poems. It was by accident that I lighted on the little volume at Denny's in the Strand, my fortunate curiosity made me turn over a page or two and then of course I bought it. I can't think of the modern poetry that has interested me so much. What one feels, I think, is that it expresses, or rather suggests, such a remarkable and attractive mind. I don't mean to depreciate the art; the simple musical effects are delightful; and the Chinese poems, which I take to be experimental unless they are very early, are the best of their kind that I know. But it is the half-intimacy one gets with a curious, whimsical character that excites and moves.