Situated in the heart of the South Downs, Charleston was, from 1916, the home of Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell and their unconventional household. Almost from the outset they began to decorate the house and to fill it with their own paintings and those of artists they knew and admired, including Picasso, Matisse, Sickert and Matthew Smith. After Duncan Grant's death in 1978 the house was restored. It opened to the public as a museum in 1986. The collection of over 150 oil paintings is displayed within the rooms of the house, very much as it was arranged during the artists' lifetimes.