Duncan Grant was born on January 21, 1885 in Rothiemurchus in the Scottish county of Inverness, the only child of Major Bartle Grant. Both of his grandmothers were English and much of his boyhood was spent in India, where his father's regiment was stationed, but there were journeys home on leave every two years.

Because his parents were still abroad, he found an antidote to his misery at school, when he spent his holidays with the family of his father's sister, Lady Jane Strachey, a remarkable, highly cultivated woman who had ten children. One of his cousins was Lytton Strachey who became a leading member of the Bloomsbury Group with whom Grant's artistic interests were awakened. In 1899 Grant entered St. Paul's School in London, wh...