Alvaro Guevara

Dame Edith Sitwell

1916

Not on display

Artist: Alvaro Guevara 1894–1951
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1829 × 1219 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Lord Duveen, Walter Taylor and George Eumorfopoulos through the Art Fund 1920
Reference: N03509

Display caption

The sitter, Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was the daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Baronet, and sister of Sir Osbert and Sachaverell Sitwell. She was a poet and at the time of this portrait she was editor of 'Wheels', an annual anthology of new poetry published between 1916 and 1921. Edith Sitwell is seated on an Omega Workshops dining chair, a modern piece of furniture designed by the painter and art critic Roger Fry, who ran his decorative arts venture, the Omega Workshops, from 33 Fitzroy Square, London, in the heart of Bloomsbury. Both Edith Sitwell and Alvaro Guevara patronised the Omega Workshops.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N03509 DAME EDITH SITWELL c. 1919

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 72×48 (183×122).
Presented by Lord Duveen, Walter Taylor, and George Eumorfopoulos through the National Art-Collections Fund 1920.
Exh: International Society, October 1919 (37), as ‘The Editor of Wheels’.
Lit: Allan Gwynne-Jones, Portrait Painters, 1950, pp.36–7, repr. pl.144.

Dame Edith Sitwell, poet and critic, born in 1887, daughter of Sir George Sitwell, 4th Bt., and sister of Sir Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, was editor of Wheels, an annual anthology of modern verse published in 1916, 1917, 1918 and 1921; she was created D.B.E., 1954. See also Wyndham Lewis, N05437.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I