artist

J. A. Lalkaka

About: 

J. A. Lalkaka began his artistic training at the J. J. School of Art in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1903. In 1908, he arrived in London after being sent to Europe by his grandfather Sir Navroji Vakil to complete his artistic education. Lalkaka attended the St John’s Wood and Westminster Art Schools, both seen as preparatory institutions to gain admittance to the Royal Academy Schools. He also spent some time in Paris. In 1913, Lalkaka returned to India and set up his own studio in Bombay. He painted mainly portraits which were popular with the governing elite. Lalkaka’s work was supported by Viceroys Irwin and Willingdon in particular.

In 1929, it was decided that the Viceroy’s Palace (now the Rashrapati Bhavan) in New Delhi should be decorated with paintings and an exhibition was held of 1,500 works of art by 200 artists. Edwin Lutyens, the architect, in consultation with the Viceroy chose Lalkaka from this exhibition, along with Atul Bose, to travel to England to paint royal portraits. Lalkaka’s portrait of George V was particularly prized. He returned to India in 1931 and was honoured by a reception given by the Art Society of India. He was closely associated with the J.J. School of Art and became the first Indian to be appointed its Vice-President in 1931. His work can now be found in galleries in Delhi and Mumbai.

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1884
Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Reviews: 

‘Exhibitions of Indian Art in London and Delhi’, Modern Review, July 1931, pp. 60-7

Secondary works: 

Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde 1922-1947 (London: Reaktion, 2007)

City of birth: 
Ahmadabad
Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Jehangir Ardeshir Lalkaka

Locations

Westminster School of Art SW1P 3QH
United Kingdom
51° 29' 33.3564" N, 0° 7' 50.0484" W
St John's Wood Art School NW8 9JT
United Kingdom
51° 31' 55.0524" N, 0° 10' 40.2708" W
Date of death: 
24 May 1967
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1908
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1908-13, 1929-31

Tags for Making Britain: 

Mukul Dey

About: 

Mukul Dey was an artist, who specialized in dry-point etching. He studied at Rabindranath Tagore's school at Santiniketan. From 1911, his paintings appeared in monthly magazines in Calcutta and then in 1913-14, the Indian Society of Oriental Art sent his paintings to Paris, London and other European cities for exhibition with the works of other students of Abanindranath Tagore. W. W. Pearson inspired Dey to work with dry point by giving him copper plates to scratch with a steel pointed needle and then sent these plates to London to be printed. In 1916, Dey accompanied Rabindranath Tagore on his tour of Japan and the USA. In 1919, Dey went to the Ajanta and Bagh caves; his experiences were published in My Pilgrimages to Ajanta and Bagh.

In 1920, Dey went to London, and was received by his old friend W. W. Pearson. Dey worked in Muirhead Bone's studio until he joined the Slade School of Art in London. In his holidays he worked in the King Alfred co-educational school in North London. In 1922, Dey was the first Indian to receive the Diploma in Mural Painting from Royal College of Art. Dey regularly exhibited in London, and met many prominent British figures in the art and literary world such as Thomas Sturge Moore, Edwin Lutyens, Laurence Binyon and Selwyn Image. His work was exhibited in the Royal Academy in London in 1923 and he decorated a portion of the Indian Pavilion at the Wembley British Empire Exhibition in 1924.

In 1927, Dey returned to India. In 1928, he became the first Indian Principal of the Government School of Art and Craft in Calcutta, and remained in that post until 1943. He continued to tour his work and remain an influential figure in India until his death in 1989.

Published works: 

Twelve Portraits, introduction by Sir John G. Woodroffe (Calcutta: Amal Home, 1917) 

My Pilgrimages to Ajanta and Bagh introduction by Laurence Binyon (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1925),

Fifteen Drypoints, interpreted in verse by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (Calcutta: Mukul Dey, 1939)

Date of birth: 
23 Jul 1895
Connections: 

Thomas Arnold, Herbert Baker, Laurence Binyon, Sir Muirhead Bone, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya, E. M. Forster, M. K. Gandhi, E. B. Havell, Dr Henry Lamb, Edwin Lutyens, Florence Mills, Thomas Sturge-Moore, W. W. Pearson, William Rothenstein, Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Professor Henry Tonks, Sarada Charan Ukil, Ranada Ukil, John Woodroffe.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Modern Review

Prabasi

Reviews: 

The Sunday Times, 20 May 1923

The Times, 5 February 1924, 4 October 1927

Daily Mail, 13 February 1924, 12 April 1924

Secondary works: 

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1922-1927 (London: Reaktion, 2007)

Archive source: 

Mukul Dey Archives, Santiniketan: www.chitralekha.org

Sketch of Francis Younghusband by Mukul Dey, Mss Eur F197/677, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Duplicate Passport, IOR/L/PJ/11/2/46, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Material relating to 1960 exhibition held by Royal India, Pakistan and Ceylon Society, Mss Eur F147/100, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Collection, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Collection, Indian Museum, Kolkata

Involved in events: 
City of birth: 
Sridharkhola, Dacca
Country of birth: 
India
Current name country of birth: 
Bangladesh

Locations

Slade School of Art London, WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
51° 31' 24.5028" N, 0° 8' 3.4116" W
Royal College of Art South Kensington, SW7 2EU
United Kingdom
51° 29' 38.4" N, 0° 10' 26.1192" W
King Alfred School
North End Road
Golders Green, NW11 7HY
United Kingdom
51° 34' 14.3544" N, 0° 11' 20.5152" W
12 Relton Mews
Knightsbridge, SW7 1ET
United Kingdom
51° 29' 56.5152" N, 0° 9' 58.4316" W
Date of death: 
01 Jan 1989
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1920
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1920-7

Tags for Making Britain: 

Manchershaw Pithawala

About: 

Artist

Date of birth: 
26 Oct 1872
Reviews: 

Illustrated London News

Secondary works: 

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Other names: 

M. F. Pithawala

Date of death: 
01 Jan 1937
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Tags for Making Britain: 

Ram Singh

About: 

Bhai Ram Singh was an artisan from Amritsar who designed and worked on the Durbar Room at Osborne House in the 1890s.

Born in the Punjab in 1857, Ram Singh was educated in the Mission School in Amritsar. Ram Singh came to the notice of Lockwood Kipling, the father of Rudyard, in India. Kipling was Principal and Director of the Mayo School of Industrial Arts in Lahore and invited by Queen Victoria to design a banqueting hall for Osborne House. Kipling took Ram Singh to England to design this room for the Queen in 1891. Ram Singh stayed in England for three years and was principal craftsman on the job. He was then commissioned to design an 'Indian Extension' for the Duke of Connaught at Bagshot Park, Surrey. After his return to India, he became Principal of Mayo School and received various honours for his work. He died in 1916.

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1857
Connections: 

Lockwood Kipling, Queen Victoria.

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Reviews: 

The Graphic, 29 October 1892

Secondary works: 

Ata-Ullah, Naazish, 'Stylistic Hybridity and Colonial Art and Design Education: A Wooden Carved Screen by Ram Singh', in T. Barringer and T. Flynn (eds) Colonialism and Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998).

Bance, Peter, The Sikhs in Britain: 150 Years of Photographs (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007)

Singh, Harbans, Encycopaedia of Sikhism (Patiala: Punjab University, 1995)

Archive source: 

English Heritage Photo Library

Osborne House, Isle of Wight

Lockwood Kipling sketch of Ram Singh, University of Sussex

Involved in events: 

Attends National Indian Assocation soirée, February 1892. [See Birmingham Daily Post, 25 February 1892]

Country of birth: 
India
Other names: 

Sardar Bahadur Bhai Ram Singh

Bhai Ram Singh

Location

Osborne House Isle of Wight, PO32 6JX
United Kingdom
50° 45' 3.9672" N, 1° 16' 12.864" W
Date of death: 
01 Jan 1916
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Date of 1st arrival in Britain: 
01 Jan 1891
Precise 1st arrival date unknown: 
Y
Dates of time spent in Britain: 

1891-1902

Tags for Making Britain: 

William Rothenstein

About: 

William Rothenstein was a renowned artist and art administrator, who was interested in various forms and origins of art.

On 4 February 1910, Sir George Birdwood chaired a lecture given by E. B. Havell to the Royal Society of Arts and commented that India had no fine arts. Outraged, Rothenstein, with 12 other signatories (including T. W. Rolleston and George Russell (AE)), wrote a letter to The Times, published on 28 February 1910, to dispute the idea that India had no fine art. Subsequently, Havell and Rothenstein were instrumental in the foundation of the India Society, which was based in London to promote Indian art.

Rothenstein travelled to India in 1910 with Christiana Herringham and met Rabindranath Tagore in Calcutta. When Tagore visited London in 1912, Rothenstein introduced him to literary circles. Tagore was often found at Rothenstein's house in Hampstead, North London. Rothenstein urged the India Society to publish Tagore's Gitanjali in 1912, which won Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

Rothenstein went to the Western Front in 1917 as Official War Artist. With these duties, he was unable to comply with the request from Kedar Nath Das Gupta and Laurence Binyon to decorate the scenery for their production of Sakuntala in 1919. Rothenstein remained an active member of the India Society in his lifetime, Indian art was an influence on his own paintings, and he was a key figure at memorial meetings for Tagore in 1941. He was knighted in 1931 and died in 1945.

Published works: 

Men and Memories (London: Faber and Faber, 1932)

Date of birth: 
29 Jan 1872
Contributions to periodicals: 
Secondary works: 

Arrowsmith, Rupert Richard, 'An Indian Renascence and the Rise of Global Modernism – William Rothenstein, Abanindranath Tagore, and the Ajanta Frescoes', Burlington Magazine (April 2010)

Lago, Mary, 'A Lost Treasure: William Rothenstein, Tagore and the India Society', The Times Literary Supplement (16 April 1999) 

Lago, Mary, Christiana Herringham and the Edwardian Art Scene (London: Lund Humphries, 1996)

Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

Mitter, Partha, The Triumph of Modernism (London: Reaktion, 2007) 

Rothenstein, William, and Lago, Mary McClelland, Imperfect Encounter: Letters of William Rothenstein and Rabindranath Tagore, 1911-1914, ed., introduction and notes by Mary McClelland Lago (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972)

Archive source: 

Houghton Library, Harvard University, Boston

Correspondence relating to Indian Art, Mss Eur B213, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

India Society papers, Mss Eur F147, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Tate Britain, Millbank, London

City of birth: 
Bradford
Country of birth: 
England
Date of death: 
14 Feb 1945
Location of death: 
Gloucestershire, England
Location: 

Hampstead

Tags for Making Britain: 

Sylvia Pankhurst

About: 

Born in Old Trafford in 1882, Sylvia Pankhurst was influenced in her youth by the political activism of her parents, Emmeline and Richard Marsden Pankhurst, who were members of the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour Party and helped establish the Women’s Franchise League. Wanting to become an artist, she attended Manchester Art School and, from 1904, Chelsea’s Royal College of Art. Her work, which combined socialist realism and Pre-Raphaelite allegory, was influenced by her art teacher, Walter Crane. Following Pankhurst’s arrival in London, her parents’ friend, Keir Hardie, became an important figure in her life. On his return from visiting India in 1909, he discussed with her his findings and opinions. Increasingly involved with the Women’s Social and Political Union, Pankhurst devoted her energies from 1906 onward to fighting for women’s suffrage, becoming known for her militancy. Using journalism to fund her activism, she wrote a series of articles on women’s labour for the WSPU newspaper, Votes for Women, went to America on a lecture tour, and in 1911 published The Suffragette on the movement’s history.

A committed socialist, Pankhurst became involved with working women in London’s East End, and supported George Lansbury MP when he stood for re-election in Bromley-by-Bow on a women’s suffrage ticket. In 1913 she established the militant East London Federation of Suffragettes, which supported trade union struggles including the Dublin lock-out. Pankhurst founded the Woman’s Dreadnought in 1914, later renamed the Workers' Dreadnought, through which she came into contact with Rajani Palme Dutt, who contributed articles to the paper from 1917 until her split with the Communist Party in 1921.

During the First World War she led anti-war campaigns, continued her social welfare work, and began to support revolutionary movements. She met Lenin after the war and, in 1920, helped form the British Communist Party from which she was later expelled. In 1924 she moved to Red Cottage in Woodford Green, where she was joined by Silvio Erasmus Corio, an Italian exile who had briefly converted to Islam in the early 1920s. At this time she wrote India and the Earthly Paradise, a ‘romantic Communist’ contribution to Indian nationalism which ‘may have been the last result of her contacts with fringe elements of that movement’ and was published in Bombay in 1926 (Romero, p. 179). Pankhurst named R. N. Chaudry as a source for the book. It is possible that the seminars she organized with Nora Smythe while living at Red Cottage brought her into contact with ‘like-minded Indians’ (Romero, p. 179). Pankhurst’s path crossed with that of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau a little later, in 1929, when Rama Rau gave an impassioned speech disputing the right of British women ignorant of the realities of India to organize a Conference on Indian Social Evils (Rama Rau, pp. 168-172). Rama Rau recalls being ‘deeply touched’ by remarks Pankhurst made in response (Rama Rau, p. 172).

She gave birth to her only child, Richard Keir Pethick, in 1927. In the 1930s Pankhurst committed herself to promoting peace, fighting fascism, assisting Jewish refugees and supporting Spanish republicans. Ethiopian independence became a consuming concern following the Italian invasion. In 1935 she established the journal New Times and Ethiopian News, which publicized and supported Haile Selassie’s anti-colonial campaign. With her son, Pankhurst went to live in Ethiopia in 1956 and died in Addis Ababa in 1960.

Published works: 

The Suffragette: The History of the Women’s Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910 (New York: Sturgis & Walton Co., 1911)

Housing & the Workers’ Revolution: Housing in Capitalist Britain and Bolshevik Russia (London: Workers’ Socialist Federation, 1919)

Rebel Ireland (London: Workers’ Socialist Federation, 1919)

Soviet Russia as I Saw it (London: Workers’ Dreadnought Publishers, 1921)

Communism and its Tactics, ed. by Mark A. S. Shipway (Edinburgh: Mark Shipway, [1921-2] 1983).

The Truth About the Oil War (London Dreadnought Publishers, 1922)

Writ on a Cold Slate (London: Dreadnought Publishers, 1922)

India and the Earthly Paradise (Bombay: ‘Bombay Chronicle’ Press, Sunshine Publishing House, 1926)

Delphos: The Future of International Language (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., nd (1928?))

Is an International Language Possible? A Lecture, etc. (London: Morland Press, 1928)

Save the Mothers: A Plea for Measures to Prevent the Annual Loss, etc. (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930)

The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (London: Longmans & Co., 1931)

The Home Front: A Mirror to Life in England During the First World War (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1932)

The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst: The Suffragette Struggle for Women’s Citizenship (London: Werner Laurie, 1935)

British Policy in Eastern Ethiopia: The Ogaden and the Reserved Area (Woodford Green, 1945)

British Policy in Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia (Woodford Green, 1945)

Education in Ethiopia (Woodford Green: ‘New Times & Ethiopia News’ Books, 1946)

The Ethiopian People: Their Rights and Progress (Woodford Green: ‘New Times and Ethiopia News’ Books, 1946)

Ex-Italian Somaliland (London: Watts & Co., 1951)

Eritrea on the Eve: The Past and Future of Italy’s ‘First-Born’ Colony, Ethiopia’s Ancient Sea Province (Woodford Green: ‘New Times & Ethiopia News’ Books, 1952)

Why Are We Destroying the Ethiopian Ports? With An Historical Retrospect, 1557-1952, etc. (Woodford Green ‘New Times and Ethiopia News’ Books, 1952)

(With Richard Pankhurst) Ethiopia and Eritrea: The Last Phase of the Reunion Struggle, 1941-1952, etc. (Woodford Green: Lalibela House, 1953)

Ethiopia: A Cultural History (Woodford Green: Lalibela House, 1955)

Example: 

Pankhurst, Sylvia, India and the Earthly Paradise (Bombay: ‘Bombay Chronicle’ Press, Sunshine Publishing House, 1926), pp. 636-8

Date of birth: 
05 May 1882
Connections: 

Herbert Asquith, R. N. Chaudry, James Connolly, Silvio Erasmus Corio, Walter Crane, Clemens Palme Dutt, Rajani Palme Dutt, Keir Hardie, C. L. R. James, George Lansbury, V. I. Lenin, Adela Pankhurst, Christabel Pankhurst, Emmeline Pankhurst, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Dhanvanthi Rama Rau, F. M. Sayal, Haile Selassie, Norah Smythe.

Communist Party of Great Britain, East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELF, later renamed the Women’s Suffrage Federation, and then the Workers' Socialist Federation), Independent Labour Party, Women’s International League, Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), Women’s World Committee against War and Fascism.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Ethiopia Observer

New Times and Ethiopian News

Women’s Dreadnought (renamed Workers’ Dreadnought)

Extract: 

In the days to come peoples, differing as they do, in diet, costume and habits, in work and recreation, under the influence of climate and natural conditions, will serve each other, learn from each other, and enjoy each other’s variety free from the hatreds born of the present economic rivalries. When the Northman of the future confronts the people of the far East or South, he will feel, neither the mingled fear and contempt of the exploiter of a weaker and more numerous race, nor the jealous hatred of the worker who fears the lower paid competitor will steal his job.

And they who today, by reason of class or race are oppressed and exploited, will commingle as friends and comrades with the descendants of those who were once their conquerors and foes.

Whilst we must work for Swaraj as a necessary step in the evolution of the peoples of India, and one which leaves them more free than now to unravel their own problems, we must recognise that this is but one step on the road by which they and all peoples must travel. Before us all lies one hope and one goal: mutuality. Whilst competition and exploitation are the basis of the social organism, the expulsion of the foreign exploitation simply means the growth of the native exploitation.

Our goal is the end of all exploitation: the world-wide abundance, mutuality and fraternity of the Earthly Paradise.

Secondary works: 

Alem-Ayehu, G., ‘Reflections on the Life and Work of Sylvia Pankhurst: The Ethiopian dimension’ (priv. coll. and private information, 2004 [S. Ayling])

Banks, O., The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists, Vol. 1. (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1985)

Bullock, I and Pankhurst, R. (eds), Sylvia Pankhurst: From Artist to Anti-Fascist (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992)

Davis, M., Sylvia Pankhurst: A Life in Radical Politics (London: Pluto Press, 1999)

Dodd, K. (ed.), A Sylvia Pankhurst Reader (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993)

Hannam, J., ‘Pankhurst, (Estelle) Sylvia (1882-1960)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2007), [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37833]

Harrison, S., Sylvia Pankhurst: Citizen of the World (London: Hornbeam Publishing, 2009)

Mitchell, D., The Fighting Pankhursts: A Study in Tenacity (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967)

Pankhurst, R., Sylvia Pankhurst: Artist and Crusader: An Intimate Portrait (London: Paddington Press, 1979)

Pankhurst, S., ‘Sylvia Pankhurst’, in Myself When Young, by Famous Women of To-day, ed. by E. A. M. Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith (London: Frederick Muller, 1938), pp. 259-312

Rama Rau, Dhanvanthi, An Inheritance: The Memoirs of Dhanvanthi Rama Rau (London: Heinemann, 1977)

Romero, P. W., E. Sylvia Pankhurst: Portrait of a Radical (London: Yale University Press, 1987)

Schreuder, M. W. H., and Schrevel, Women, Suffrage, and Politics: The Papers of Sylvia Pankhurst, 1882-1960, from the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam (Reading: Adam Matthew, 1991)

Tickner, L., The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987)

Winslow, B., Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual Politics and Political Activism (London: UCL Press, 1996)

Wright, P., ‘The Stone Bomb’, London Review of Books (23 August 2001)

Relevance: 

The passage quoted above both articulates Sylvia Pankhurst’s anti-colonial and anti-racist endorsement of the Indian campaign for self-rule; and indicates the wider idealistic Communist and utopian contexts within which she situated the swaraj movement, and which inspired and informed her commitment to promoting this particular cause. 

Archive source: 

Correspondence and papers, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam

Correspondence, Women’s Library, London

Correspondence with Society of Authors, Add. MSS 56769-56771, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with the Independent Labour Party, British Library of Political and Economic Science

Letters to David Lloyd George, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters to the Manchester Guardian, John Rylands, University of Manchester

Correspondence with William Gillies, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester

Correspondence with Ada Lois James, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison

Correspondence with F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, Trinity College, Cambridge

City of birth: 
Manchester
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst

Date of death: 
27 Sep 1960
Location of death: 
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Augustus John

About: 

Augustus John was widely known as the archetypal bohemian artist at the beginning of the twentieth century. He left the quiet seaside town of Tenby in 1894 to attend the Slade School of Fine Art in London, followed the next year by his sister, the artist Gwen John. After an accident in 1895, he cultivated a ‘wild’ persona and established his place within the progressive cultural circles of fin-de-siècle London. As well as being a radical student, he was also a prolific one, and his art was widely admired by his contemporaries. He married Ida Margaret Nettleship, a fellow Slade student, on 24 January 1901, and they went to live in Liverpool where John was employed in an art school affiliated to University College, London.

It was during this period that John became acquainted with the Gypsy scholar, John Sampson. Nomadic life on the open road was to become something of a fascination to John, and he took his family retinue (which included his wife, his mistress Dorothy McNeill, known to the family as Dorelia, and all their children) on various trips in a Romany caravan. On moving back to London, John established himself as a central figure in the progressive faction of the London art world, opening the Chelsea Art School with William Orpen (1903-7). He was also an enthusiastic member of the New English Art Club. John was very close to William Rothenstein and his wife, Alice. John is the male figure in Rothenstein’s enigmatic The Doll’s House (1899-1900). Rothenstein praised John’s work highly, going as far as to call him a ‘genius’ in his autobiography, Men and Memories (vol. 1, p. 3). It was most probably through his friendship with Rothenstein that John became a member of the India Society. He is listed as a member from the outset of the Society in The India Society: Report for the year ending December 31, 1911 (London: Chiswick Press, 1912). John did not publish his opinions on Indian art but must have been acquainted with it through his connections with Rothenstein and the India Society. In 1908, he worked on a canvas entitled Nirvana (sketches are in the Tate Collection; presented by William Rothenstein in 1917) which might suggest a closer personal interest in eastern spiritual ideas. This was exhibited at the ‘Twenty Years of British Art, 1890-1910’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1910.

From 1920, John travelled through Europe, Jamaica and the US in a bid to revive his reputation which had rapidly declined after the war. In the 1930s and 1940s, he knew the Ceylonese M. J. Tambimuttu and contributed a portrait of the poet and editor to his Out of this War (1941). In September of 1961, a seriously-ill John went to London to take part in a demonstration against nuclear weapons. He died a few weeks later at home in Hertfordshire.

Published works: 

Autobiography (London: Cape, 1975)

Date of birth: 
04 Jan 1878
Secondary works: 

Holroyd, Michael, Augustus John: The New Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1996)

Rothenstein, John, Modern English Painters: Sickert to Smith, vol. 1, rev. edn (London: Macdonald & Jane's, 1976)

Rothenstein, W., Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 2 vols (London: Faber & Faber, 1931-2)

Shone, R., Augustus John (Oxford and New York: Phaidon, 1979)

Archive source: 

Augustus John Papers, National Library of Wales, Cardiff

Correspondence and sketches, Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas, Austin

Correspondence, British Library, London

Correspondence with William Rothenstein, Houghton Library, Harvard University

Correspondence with the Gypsy Lore Society, University of Liverpool

City of birth: 
Tenby, Pembrokeshire
Country of birth: 
Wales
Other names: 

Augustus Edwin John

Date of death: 
31 Oct 1961
Tags for Making Britain: 

The Sitwells

About: 

The three Sitwell siblings – Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell – were poets, writers, and patrons of artists, who fashioned themselves as artistic leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, rivalling those in the ‘Bloomsbury Group’. They came from an aristocratic and wealthy family, and spent most of their childhood at Renishaw Hall, the family’s stately home in Derbyshire. In the 1910s, they moved to London. Their first venture was an annual anthology of modern verse called Wheels, edited by Edith Sitwell from 1916 to 1921, which collected the work of many young talents such as Nancy Cunard, Wilfred Owen and Aldous Huxley, as well as their own poems. The Sitwells achieved legendary status when Edith gave a reading of her poetry collection Façade in London’s Aeolian Hall in 1923; her poems were accompanied by orchestral music by William Walton, and the poet controversially spoke using a Sengerphone, with her back towards the audience. The Sitwells considered themselves as rebels against ‘philistine’ values and accepted artistic conventions. They thrived on hostile criticism and were united against their sworn ‘enemies’, many of whom were once their close friends, such as Noël Coward and Wyndham Lewis. The Sitwells became estranged from D. H. Lawrence over his publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928).

All three Sitwells were prolific writers, but they are best remembered as cultural icons due to their style and personality. C. L. R. James, who recorded his meeting with Edith Sitwell in 1932, remembers how her reputation as an eccentric artist was well known in Trinidad, and, upon meeting her, he described her as ‘a striking figure [and] even more decidedly a personality’. The Sitwells defined themselves against the Cambridge-oriented Bloomsbury Group, but nevertheless had close relationships with many of its members, and were often spotted at its social functions. Mulk Raj Anand, in Conversations in Bloomsbury, records his meeting with Edith Sitwell at a party, and her conversation with D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley. Edith was a close friend of Tambimuttu, and both she and Osbert were contributors to his Poetry London.

Published works: 

Edith Sitwell:

The Mother and Other Poems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1915)

(ed.) Wheels: An Anthology of Verse (Blackwell: Oxford, 1916-21)

Clowns’ Houses (Oxford: Blackwell, 1918)

The Wooden Pegasus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1920)

Façade (Kensington: Favil Press, 1922)

Bucolic Comedies (London: Duckworth, 1923)

The Sleeping Beauty (London: Duckworth, 1924)

Troy Park (London: Duckworth, 1925)

Poetry and Criticism (London: Hogarth Press, 1925)

Elegy on Dead Fashion (London: Duckworth, 1926)

Rustic Elegies (London: Duckworth, 1927)

Popular Song, illustrated with designs by Edward Bawden (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1928)

Five Poems (London: Duckworth, 1928)

Gold Coast Customs (London: Duckworth, 1929)

Alexander Pope (London: Faber & Faber, 1930)

(ed.) The Pleasures of Poetry: A Critical Anthology (London: Duckworth, 1930-32)

Epithalamium (London: G. Duckworth & Co., 1931)

Jane Barston, with a drawing by R. A. Davies (London: Faber & Faber, 1931) 

In Spring, with wood engravings by Edward Carrick (London: privately printed, 1931)

Bath (London: Faber & Faber, 1932)

The English Eccentrics (London: Faber & Faber, 1933; revised and enlarged edition, London: Dobson, 1958)

Five Variations on a Theme (London: Duckworth, 1933)

Aspects of Modern Poetry (London: Duckworth, 1934)

Victoria of England (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)

Selected Poems (London: Duckworth, 1936)

I Live Under a Black Sun (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937)

(ed.) Edith Sitwell’s Anthology (London: Victor Gollancz, 1940)

Poems New and Old (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)

(ed.) Look: The Sun (London: Victor Gollancz, 1941)

Street Songs (London: Macmillan, 1942)

English Women (London: Collins, 1942)

A Poet’s Notebook (London: Macmillan, 1943)

Green Song & Other Poems (London: Macmillan, 1944)

(ed.) Planet and Glow-Worm: A Book for the Sleepless (London: Macmillan & Co., 1944)

The Song of the Cold (London: Macmillan, 1945)

Fanfare for Elizabeth (London: Macmillan, 1946)

The Shadow of Cain (London: Lehmann, 1947)

A Notebook on William Shakespeare (London: Macmillan, 1948)

‘For T. S. Eliot’, in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, from Conrad Aiken and Others, complied by Richard March and Tambimuttu (London : Editions Poetry, 1948), pp. 33-4

The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems, 1920-1947 (London: Macmillan, 1949)

Poor Men’s Music (London: Fore Publications, 1950)

(ed.) A Book of the Winter (London: Macmillan & Co., 1950)

(ed.) The American Genius (London: John Lehmann, 1951)

Gardeners and Astronomers (London: Macmillan, 1953)

‘Coming to London’, in William Plomer and Leonard Woolf (eds) Coming to London (London: Phoenix House, 1957), pp. 167-76

The Outcasts (London: Macmillan, 1962)

The Queens of the Hive (London: Macmillan, 1962)

Taken Care Of (London: Hutchinson, 1965)

 

Osbert Sitwell:

The Winstonburg Line: Three Satires (London: Hendersons, 1919)

Argonaut and Juggernaut (London: Chatto & Windus, 1919)

At the House of Mrs. Kinfoot: Consisting of Four Satires (Kensington: Favil Press, 1921)

Who Killed Cock-Robin?: Remarks on Poetry, on its Criticism, and, as a Sad Warning, the Story of Eunuch Arden (London: Daniel, 1921)

Out of the Flame (London: Richards, 1923)

 Triple Fugue (London: Richards, 1924)

(with Margaret Barton) Brighton (London: Faber & Faber, 1925)

C. R. W. Nevinson, as O. S. (London: Benn, 1925)

Discursions on Travel, Art and Life (London: Richards, 1925)

Before the Bombardment (London: Duckworth, 1926)

England Reclaimed: A Book of Eclogues (London: Duckworth, 1927)

The People’s Album of London Statues (London: Duckworth, 1928)

Miss Mew (Stanford Dingley: Mill House Press, 1929)

The Man Who Lost Himself (London: Duckworth, 1929)

Dumb-Animal, and Other Stories (London: Duckworth, 1930)

 Three-Quarter Length Portrait of Michael Arlen. With a Preface: The History of a Portrait, by the Author (London: Heinemann, 1930)

The Collected Satires and Poems of Osbert Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1931)

A Three-Quarter Length Portrait of the Viscountess Wimborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931)

(ed. with Margaret Barton) Victoriana: A Symposium of Victorian Wisdom (London: Duckworth, 1931)

Dickens (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932)

Miracle on Sinai: A Satirical Novel (London: Duckworth, 1933)

Penny Foolish: A Book of Tirades and Panegyrics (London: Macmillan, 1935)

Mrs. Kimber (London: Macmillan, 1937)

Those Were the Days: Panorama with Figures (London: Macmillan, 1938)

Escape with Me!: An Oriental Sketch-Book (London: Macmillan, 1939)

(ed.) Two Generations (London: Macmillan, 1940)

Open the Door!: A Volume of Stories (London: Macmillan, 1941)

A Place of One’s Own (London: Macmillan, 1941)

(with Rubeigh James Minney) Gentle Caesar: A Play in Three Acts (London: Macmillan, 1942)

Selected Poems Old and New (London: Duckworth, 1943)

(ed. with Margaret Barton) Sober Truth: A Collection of Nineteenth-Century Episodes, Fantastic, Grotesque and Mysterious (London: MacDonald, 1944)

Left Hand, Right Hand! (London: Macmillan, 1945)

A Letter to My Son (London: Home & Van Thal, 1944)

Sing High! Sing Low!: A Book of Essays (London: Macmillan, 1944)

The True Story of Dick Whittington: A Christmas Story for Cat-Lovers (London: Home & Van Thal, 1945)

The Scarlet Tree (London: Macmillan, 1946)

Alive-Alive Oh! and Other Stories (London: Pan, 1947)

Great Morning! (London: Macmillan, 1948)

The Novels of George Meredith and Some Notes on the English Novel (London: Oxford University Press, 1947)

(ed.) Walter Sickert, A Free House! Or, The Artist as Craftsman (London: Macmillan, 1947)

Four Songs of the Italian Earth (Pawlet, Vt.: Banyan Press, 1948)

Laughter in the Next Room (London: Macmillan, 1948)

Death of a God, and Other Stories (London: Macmillan, 1949)

Demos the Emperor: A Secular Oratorio (London: Macmillan, 1949)

England Reclaimed, and Other Poems (Boston: Little, Brown, 1949)

Introduction to the Catalogue of the Frick Collection: Published on the Founder’s Centenary, 19 December 1949 (New York: Ram Press, 1949)

Noble Essences: A Book of Characters (Boston: Little, Brown, 1950)

Winters of Content, and Other Discursions on Mediterranean Art and Travel (London: Duckworth, 1950)

Wrack at Tidesend, a Book of Balnearics: Being the Second Volume of England Reclaimed (London: Macmillan, 1952)

Collected Stories (London: Duckworth, 1953)

The Four Continents: Being More Discursions an Travel, Art, and Life (London: Macmillan, 1954)

On the Continent: A Book of Inquilinics. Being the Third Volume of England Reclaimed (London: Macmillan, 1958)

Fee Fi Fo Fum!: A Book of Fairy Stories (London: Macmillan, 1959)

A Place of One’s Own, and Other Stories (London: Icon, 1961)

Tales My Father Taught Me: An Evocation of Extravagant Episodes (London: Hutchinson, 1962)

Pound Wise (London: Hutchinson, 1963)

Queen Mary and Others (London: Joseph, 1974)

 

Sacheverell Sitwell:

The People’s Palace (Oxford: Blackwell, 1918)

The Hundred and One Harlequins (London: Grant Richards, 1922)

Doctor Donne and Gargantua: First Canto, with drawings by Wyndham Lewis (London: Favile Press, 1921)

All Summer in a Day: An Autobiographical Fantasia (London: Duckworth, 1926) 

The Thirteenth Caesar, and Other Poems (London: Grant Richards, 1924)

Exalt the Eglantine, and Other Poems, decorated by Thomas Lowinsky (London: The Fleuron, 1926) 

Southern Baroque Art (London: Grant Richards, 1924)

German Baroque Art (London: Duckworth, 1927)

The Cyder Feast, and Other Poems (London: Duckworth, 1927)

Two Poems, Ten Songs (London: Duckworth, 1929)

The Gothick North: The Visit of the Gypsies (London: Duckworth, 1929)

Doctor Donne & Gargantua: The First Six Cantos (London; Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930; New York : G. Duckworth & Co., 1930)

Beckford and Beckfordism: An Essay (London: Duckworth, 1930)

Far from My Home, Stories: Long and Short (London: Duckworth, 1931)

Spanish Baroque Art, with Buildings in Portugal, Mexico and Other Colonies (London: Duckworth, 1931)

Mozart (London: Peter Davis, 1932)

Canons of Giant Art: Twenty Torsos in Heroic Landscapes (London: Faber & Faber, 1933)

Touching the Orient: Six Sketches (London: Duckworth, 1934)

Liszt (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)

Scarlatti (London: Faber & Faber, 1935)

A Background for Domenico Scarlatti, 1685-1757 (London: Faber & Faber, 1935)

Dance of the Quick and the Dead: An Entertainment of the Imagination (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)

Collected Poems, introductory essay by Edith Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1936)

Conversation Pieces: A Survey of English Domestic Portraits and their Painters (London: Batsford, 1936)

Narrative Pictures (London: Batsford, 1937)

Old Fashioned Flowers (London: Country Life, 1939)

Poltergeists: An Introduction and Examination Followed by Chosen Instances (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)

Sacred and Profane Love (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)

Mauretania:Warrior, Man and Woman (London: Duckworth, 1940)

The Homing of the Winds, and Other Passages in Prose (London: Faber & Faber, 1942)

Splendours and Miseries (London: Faber & Faber, 1943)

British Architecture and Craftsmen: A Survey of Taste, Design, and Sstyle during Three Centuries, 1600 to 1830, etc. (London: Batsford, 1945)

The Hunters and Hunted (London: Macmillan, 1947)

Selected Poems, preface by Osbert Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1948)

Morning, Noon and Night in London (London: Macmillan, 1948)

The Netherlands (London: Batsford, 1948)

Spain (London: Batsford, 1950)

Cupid and the Jacaranda (London: Macmillan & Co., 1952) 

Truffle Hunt (London: Robert Hale, 1953)

(with Handasyde Buchanan and James Fisher) Fine Bird Books, 1700-1900 (London: Collins, 1953)

Portugal and Madeira (London: Batsford, 1954)

(with Wilfrid Blunt) Great Flower Books, 1700-1900, edited by P. W. Synge (London: Collins, 1955)

Denmark (London: Batsford, 1956)

Arabesque and Honeycomb (London: Robert Hale, 1957)

Malta, illustrated by Tony Armstrong Jones (London: Batsford, 1958)

Bridge of the Brocade Sash: Travels and Observations in Japan (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1959)

Austria, with photographs by Toni Schneiders (London: Thames & Hudson, 1959)

Journey to the Ends of Time (London: Cassell, 1959)

Golden Wall and Mirador: From England to Peru (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1961)

The Red Chapels of Banteai, and Temples in Cambodia, India, Siam, and Nepal (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962)

To Henry Woodward (London: Covent Garden Press, 1972)

Tropicalia (Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1972)

Agamemnon’s Tomb (Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1972) 

The Archipelago of Daffodils (Brackley: Smart & Co., 1972)

Auricula Theatre (Brackley: Smart & Co., 1972) 

For Want of a Golden City (London: Day, 1973)

Brother and Sister: A Ballad of the Paralelo (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)

Diptycha Musica: Living Dangerously (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)

The Octogenarian (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)

Nine Ballads; [and] Four More Lilies (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)

Dodecameron: A Self Portrait in Twelve Poems with an Apologia in Prose (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977) 

An Indian Summer: 100 Recent Poems (London: Macmillan, 1982)

Catalysts in Collusion: A Book of Catalysts (Badby: M. Battison, 1980)

Hortus Sitwellianus, with line illustrations by Meriel Edmunds (Wilton, Salisbury, Wiltshire: M. Russell, 1984)

 

Collaborations:

Sitwell, Edith and Sitwell, Osbert, Twentieth-Century Harlequinade and Other Poems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1916)

Sitwell, Edith, Sitwell, Osbert and Sitwell, Sacheverell, Poor Young People (London: Fleuron, 1925)

Sitwell, Osbert and Sitwell, Sacheverell, All at Sea: A Social Tragedy in Three Acts for First-Class Passengers Only (London: Duckworth, 1927)

Sitwell, Edith, Sitwell, Osbert and Sitwell, Sacheverell, Trio: Dissertations on Some Aspects of National Genius, Delivered as the Northcliffe Lectures at the University of London in 1937 (London: Macmillan, 1938; Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970)

Connections: 

Harold Acton, Kingsley Amis, Mulk Raj Anand, Michael Arlen, George Barker, Cecil Beaton, Clive Bell, Max Beerbohm, Maurice Bowra, Sylvia Beach, Bryher (Winifred Ellerman), Stella Bowen, Roy Campbell, Maurice Carpenter, Jean Cocteau, Cyril Connolly, Noël Coward, Anthony Cronin, Nancy Cunard, Bonamy Dobree, Valentine Dobree, Richard Eberhart, T. S. Eliot, Northrop Fry, Edmund Gosse, Grahame Greene, E. M. Foster, Roger Fry, Robert Graves, John Gawsworth, Graham Greene, Alec Guinness, John Hayward, Robert Herring, David Horner, Aldous Huxley, C. L. R. James, C. Richard Jennings, C. E. M. Joad, Maynard Keynes, Constant Lambert, D. H. Lawrence, Jack Lindsay, John Lehmann, Wyndham Lewis, Elkin Mathews, Somerset Maugham, Raymond Marriott, Charlotte Mew, Harold Monro, Alida Monro, Marianne Moore, John Middleton Murry, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen, William Plomer, Katherine Ann Porter, Ezra Pound, J. B. Priestley, Herbert Read, Max Reinhardt, George Russell, Siegfried Sassoon, Vita Sackville-West, Nikhil Sen, George Bernard Shaw, Sydney Schiff, Violet Schiff, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, Walter Sickert, Stephen Spender, Gertrude Stein, Lytton Strachey, Meary James Tambimuttu, Pavel Tchelichew, Dylan Thomas, Feliks Topolski, Iris Tree, Sherard Vines, William Walton, Evelyn Waugh, Arthur Waley, Denton Welch, Rebecca West, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, Beryl de Zoete.

Contributions to periodicals: 

Edith Sitwell:

Adam, Art and Letters, Athenaeum, Atlantic Monthly, Cambridge Magazine, The Chapbook, Coterie, CriterionDaily Herald, Daily Mirror, Encounter, The English Review, Form, The Fortnightly Review, The Golden Hind, Good Housekeeping, The Graphic, Harper’s Bazaar, Horizon, Joy Street, Life and Letters Today, The Literary Digest, The Living Age, The Listener, London Magazine, The Nation and Athenaeum, The New Age, New Statesman and Nation, New Writing and Daylight, The Nineteenth Century and After, Oxford Outlook, Meanjin, Penguin New Writing, Poetry, Poetry London, Quarterly Review of Literature, Saturday Westminster Gazette, Saturday Review of Literature, The Sackbut, Sunday Express, Sunday Graphic, Sunday Referee, Spectator, Time and Tide, Times Literary Supplement, View, Vogue, Woman’s Journal.

Criterion (review of Charlotte Mew, The Farmer’s Bride and The Rambling Sailor, 9.34, October 1929, pp. 130-4)

Criterion (review of Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans, 4.2, April 1926, pp. 390-2)

Weekly Dispatch (‘Who are the Sitwells – and why do they do it?’, 14, 14 November 1926)

Atlantic Monthly (‘Dylan Thomas’, 193.2, Feb 1954, pp. 42-5)

Poetry (‘Elegy for Dylan Thomas’, 87.2, 1955/1956, pp. 63-7)

Poetry (‘Roy Campbell’, 92.1, 1958, pp. 42-8)

 

Osbert Sitwell:

The Apple, Architectural Review, American Scholar, Art and Letters, Atlantic Monthly, Burlington MagazineBystander, Cambridge Magazine, The Cavalcade, The Chapbook, Cornhill Magazine, Coterie, Creative Art, Criterion, Daily Graphic, The  Dial, The English Review, The Fortnightly Review, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Horizon, Life and Letters, Lilliput, The Listener, The Living Age, London Magazine, The Nation, The Nation and Athenaeum, National and English Review, New Chronicle, New Republic, New Statesman, Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, New Writing and Daylight, Penguin New Writing, Poetry, Poetry London, Strand Magazine, The Queen, The Sackbut, Saturday Westminster Gazette, St Martin’s Review, Saturday Review of Literature, Sunday Referee, Spectator, The Studio, Times Literary Supplement, Town & Country, Vogue, Weekend-Review, Wine & Food, Yale Review.

Criterion (‘A German Eighteenth-Century Town’, 2.8, July 1924, pp. 433-47)

Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine (‘We Three’, 92.486, November 1933, pp. 64-9)

Spectator (‘A War to End Class War’, 163.5812, 17 November 1939)

Spectator (‘Roger Fry and Sir Osbert Sitwell, 174.6095, 21 May 1948)

Sunday Times (‘Bloomsbury in the 1920s’, 6 February 1949, p. 6)

Atlantic Monthly (‘Wilfred Owen’, 186.3, 1950, pp. 37-42)

 

Sacheverell Sitwell:

Architectural Review, Ark, Art and Letters, Atlantic Monthly, Burlington Magazine, The Chapbook, Country Life, The Countryman, Coterie, Criterion, The EgoistEncounter, Foyer, The Fortnightly, Geographic Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, House and Garden, Housewife, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Life and Letters Today, Lilliput, The Listener, The London Aphrodite, Musical Times, My Garden, The Nation and Athenaeum, Nine, New Statesman, New World Writing, The New York Times Magazine, Picture Post, Poetry, Radio Times, Realités, Saturday Book, Strand Magazine, The Queen, The Sackbut, Spectator, Vogue.

Criterion (‘Three Variations [poem]’, 2.7, April 1924, pp. 296-9)

The Listener (‘Epstein on Himself’, 24.623, 19 December 1940)

The Listener (‘Nuptials of the East and West’, 56.1438, 18 October 1956, pp. 609-10)

Reviews: 

Edith Sitwell:

Sherard Vines, Criterion 8.3, July 1929, pp. 710-15 (Gold Coast Customs, and Other Poems)

Wyndham Lewis, Time and Tide 15.46, 17 November 1934, pp. 1410-12 (Aspects of Modern Poetry)

Katherine Anne Porter, New York Herald Tribute, 18 December 1949 (The Canticle of the Rose)

Spender, Stephen, New Republic 152.17, 24 April 1965, pp. 19-20 (Taken Care Of)

 

Osbert Sitwell:

Conrad Aiken, Criterion 3.9, October 1924, pp. 141-4 (Triple Fugue)

C. E. M. Joad, Spectator 146.5369, 23 May 1931 (Victoriana)

O. W., Criterion 11.45, July 1932, p. 757 (Dickens)

Sacheverell Sitwell, Life and Letters Today 47.98, October 1945, pp. 52-60 (Left Hand, Right Hand!)

 

Sacheverell Sitwell:

C. P. A., Criterion 2.8, July 1924, pp. 486-9 (Southern Baroque Art)

Harold Monro, Criterion 3.10, January 1925, pp. 322-6 (The Thirteenth Caesar)

G. R., Monthly Criterion 5.2, May 1927, pp. 273-4 (All Summer in a Day)

John Gould Fletcher, Monthly Criterion 6.2, August 1927, pp. 168-72 (The Cyder-Feast and Other Poems)

Roger Hinks, Criterion 9.34, October 1929, pp. 155-7 (The Gothick North: The Visit of the Gypsies)

Geoffrey Grigson, Criterion 13.50, October 1933, p. 138 (Canons of Giant Art)

Orlo Williams, Criterion 16.63, January 1937, pp. 346-9 (Dance of the Quick and the Dead)

Bonamy Dobrée, Spectator 147.5378, 25 July 1931 (Spanish Baroque Art)

 

The Sitwells:

Richard Aldington, ‘The Poetry of the Sitwells’, Poetry 17, 1920/1921

Arnold Bennett, ‘Sitwells’, Adelphi 1.3, August 1923

Vivian Mercier, ‘Another Look at the Sitwells’, The Hudson Review 7.3, Autumn 1954, pp. 445-53

Stuart Fletcher, ‘The Tragedy of the Sitwells’, The Sackbut 9, August 1928, pp. 17-19

‘The Three Sitwells: A Study of That Trio of Ornaments of English Life and Letters’, Vanity Fair 32.6, 1929, p. 44

Secondary works: 

Bradford, Sarah, et al., The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s, 2nd edn (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996)

Cevasco, G. A., The Sitwells: Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987)

Elborn, Geoffrey, Edith Sitwell: A Biography (London: Sheldon, 1981)

Fifoot, Richard, A Bibliography of Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell, revised edition (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1971)

Glendinning, Victoria, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981)

James, C. L. R., ‘Bloomsbury: An Encounter with Edith Sitwell’, in The C.L.R. James Reader, ed. by Anna Grimshaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 43-8

Lehmann, John, A Nest of Tigers: The Sitwells in Their Times (London: Macmillan, 1968)

Meegroz, R. L., The Three Sitwells: A Biographical and Critical Study (London: Richards Press, 1927)

Nandakumar, Prema, ‘Edith Sitwell: 1887-1964’ (obituary), Aryan Path 36.11 (November 1965), pp. 501-8

Pearson, John, Façades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (London: Macmillan, 1978)

Salter, Elizabeth Fulton, The Last Years of a Rebel: A Memoir of Edith Sitwell (London: Bodley Head, 1967)

Archive source: 

Volume of manuscript poems by Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), Dept. of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham

Edith Sitwell Letters, University of Sussex Special Collections

Osbert Sitwell, correspondence and compositions, MS Eng 1293, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library

Edith Sitwell Papers, 1932-1964 (bulk 1959-1962), Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Dame Edith Sitwell Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin

MS and letters, British Library, St Pancras

Letters, London Library

Thomas Balston: Papers of the Sitwells, 1924-1960, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA

Letters, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge

Correspondence and literary papers, Historical Manuscripts Commission, National Register of Archives

Letters and literary MSS, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City

Dame Edith Sitwell Fonds (F0408), Osbert Sitwell Fonds (F0409), and Sacheverell Sitwell Fonds (F0410), York University, Toronto

Letters, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Letters from Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji Collection

The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library, Hamilton, ON, Canada

City of birth: 
Scarborough, North Yorkshire (Edith and Sacheverell); London (Osbert)
Country of birth: 
England
Other names: 

Edith (Louisa) Sitwell (b. 7 September 1887; d. 9 December 1964)

(Francis) Osbert (Sacheverell) Sitwell (b. 6 December 1892; d. 4 May 1969)

Sacheverell Sitwell (b. 15 November 1897; d. 1 Ocotber 1988)

Location of death: 
London (Edith); Montegufoni, Italy (Osbert); Towcester, Northamptonshire (Sacheverell)
Location: 

Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire

Scarborough (another ancestral home)

Pembridge Mansions, Moscow Road, Bayswater, London (Edith Sitwell’s London home from 1914-1932) 

Swan Walk, Chelsea (Osbert Sitwell’s London base until 1919)

2 Carlyle Square, King’s Road, Chelsea (Osbert Sitwell’s London home from 1919 to 1963)

The Sesame Club, 49 Grosvenor Street, London (Edith Sitwell’s residence)

Jamini Roy

About: 

Jamini Roy was a prolific painter of the twentieth century. His work is widely collected both in India and abroad. At the age of 16, he was sent to the Government Art School in Calcutta, receiving his Diploma in 1908. He was later to reject his formal, academic training as well as the style of the Bengali 'revivalist' movement and one of his teachers, Abanindranath Tagore. Instead, he took inspiration from indigenous Indian art, often described as 'folk' art. He was particularly drawn to Kalighat art and the Santhal people, often depicting Santhal dancers and drummers in his characteristic 'flat' style using a restricted palette of earthy colours. He experimented with techniques and materials, such as tempera, card, rush-matting and natural pigments. His obituary in The Times noted: ‘His studio was a place of pilgrimage for all interested in the artistic heritage of Bengal and in his own delightful person he typified a generation and a culture' (15/05/72).

The poet and editor M. J. Tambimuttu became interested in Roy's work in the mid-1940s. In correspondence, he expressed an interest in commissioning a monograph on Roy for his Editions Poetry London list, as well as in arranging an exhibition of his work in England (correspondence with Kurt Larisch, Tambimuttu archive, British Library). Roy's work was exhibited in London in 1947 (Burlington House) and in New York in 1953. He was awarded the Padma Bushan by the Indian Government in 1955. Roy was supported, collected and written about by William Archer, the Keeper of the Indian Section at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and also by Archer’s successor, John Conran Irwin. Irwin collaborated with the progressive poet Bishnu Dey to write the first biography of Roy. Irwin was also the executive secretary of the important exhibition at Burlington House, ‘The Arts of India and Pakistan’, in the winter of 1947-8, in which Roy’s work was included. William Archer made Roy’s work central to his book India and Modern Art (1959).

Date of birth: 
01 Jan 1887
Connections: 

William Archer, E. M. Forster (visited an exhibition of Roy's work), John Conran Irwin, Abanindranath Tagore, M. J. Tambimuttu.

Burlington House, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Precise DOB unknown: 
Y
Secondary works: 

Archer, William, India and Modern Art (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959)

Dey, Bishnu and Irwin, John, Jamini Roy (Calcutta: Indian Society of Oriental Art, 1944)

Jamini Roy (New Delhi: Lala Kali Akademi, 1973)

Milford, Mary E., 'A Modern Primitive', Horizon 10.59 (November 1944), pp. 338-42

Paintings of Jamini Roy, words by Sipra Chakravarty (Calcutta: Indian Museum, 1991)

Archive source: 

Jamini Roy material collected by William Archer, Mss Eur F236, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

City of birth: 
Chhandar, Bengal
Country of birth: 
India
Date of death: 
01 Jan 1972
Precise date of death unknown: 
Y
Location of death: 
Kolkata, India
Tags for Making Britain: 
Subscribe to RSS - artist