Roger Fry - Virginia Woolf - Public domain portrait drawing

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English art critic and artist, best known as the champion of the movement he termed Post-Impressionism. Fry was born into a Quaker family and was educated at the University of Cambridge for a career in science. His interest in art grew, however, and he studied painting in Italy and also began to lecture on art. His first book, Giovanni Bellini, was published in 1899.

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) is recognised as one of the most innovative writers of the 20th century. Perhaps best known as the author of Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), she was also a prolific writer of essays, diaries, letters and biographies. Both in style and subject matter, Woolf’s work captures the fast-changing world in which she was working, from transformations in gender roles, sexuality and class to technologies such as cars, airplanes and cinema. Influenced by seminal writers and artists of the period such as Marcel Proust, Igor Stravinsky and the Post-Impressionists, Woolf’s work explores the key motifs of modernism, including the subconscious, time, perception, the city and the impact of war. Her ‘stream of consciousness’ technique enabled her to portray the interior lives of her characters and to depict the montage-like imprint of memory.