Street Scene in Tuscany is a rare, early work from a formative period in Vanessa Bell’s career. The Post-Impressionist exhibitions at the Grafton Galleries in 1910/11 and 1912 were an important reference point in Bell’s development as a painter over the ensuing decade. The use of pure colour in this work, juxtaposing areas of pink, yellow and green, is indicative of creative currents flowing from the art of Henry Matisse.

Richard Shone has written about this work:

"Vanessa Bell visited Italy in the spring of 1912 with Clive Bell and Roger Fry, and painted several small oil on panel townscapes in Pisa and elsewhere. Street Scene in Tuscany is a rare, early example painted with impressionistic fluidity and colour hues typical of the period. Bell had seen the ground-breaking exhibtion, Manet and the Post-Impressionists organised by Roger Fry at the Grafton Galleries in 1910 with works by Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse and Van Gogh. In 1912 her work was included in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition where, alongside Duncan Grant, she found herself in the company of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse."