Artistic Influences

Kelley, Alice van Buren. "Alice Van Buren Kelley on To the Lighthouse: Bloomsburry Art Theory and Woolf's Concept of Art." Virginia Woolf, Comprehensive research and study guide Bloom's major novelists. Ed. Harold Bloom. Broomall: Chelsea House, 2002. 52-53.

Kelley states that Post Impressionist art had an influence in Virginia Woolf’s writing. By presenting the fact that Woolf was surrounded with artistic men and women prior to writing To the Lighthouse Kelley hopes to tie the Post-impressionism paintings and the critiques given, specifically by Roger Fry, one of the most influential art critics of Virginia Woolf’s time, to the writing style and message sent through by Woolf in To the Lighthouse. Kelley’s observations dictate that Woolf was specifically influenced by was a statement that he made five years prior to her writing To the Lighthouse: “Now, these artists do not seek to give what can, after all, be but a pale reflex of actual appearances, but to arouse the conviction of a new and definite reality… In fact, they aim not at illusion but at reality.” Kelley believes that his statement was influential upon her because not only did she use it when she wrote her autobiography, but she it seems to resurface within her writings “like a leitmotif” (53).

After noting that Woolf is specifically affected through the statement Fry made; the reader can enhance the significance that Lily Briscoe’s character has in the novel. If in fact Woolf did not seek to give what she could, but instead she sought to create a reality within her writings, then the fact that Lily Briscoe was presented as a woman who has to battle her desire to paint and forsake the reality of what society expects from her in order to be fulfilled gives the reader a sense of reality as it was known to Woolf. She succeeds in portraying Lily as an artist who cannot finish her painting until she reaches a point of understanding what her purpose in life is and more importantly, understanding who it is that she is. The reader can experience a higher sense of understanding why the thoughts in the book seem to flow with such an intensity that allows the mind to sometimes lose itself within the words. The creative style that Lily possesses is greater than her ability to portray it, that is, until she reaches a consensus, an equilibrium within herself. Lily’s thoughts revolve around Mrs. Ramsay and all that she represents, but in the same manner, the thoughts that Woolf ponders upon are also centered around those people she not only admires, but is exposed to on a regular basis.