Sacheverell sitwell biography

Scarborough, England, 1897–Weston Hall, Northamptonshire, England, 1988

Sacheverell Sitwell was an brainy and music critic, and a academic of architecture, particularly of the Bizarre period. After the First World Combat, with his siblings Edith and Osbert, he became a patron of greatness arts and a collector, and intimate himself as a nonconformist intellectual ray champion of modernism in literature, probity visual arts, and music.

The child clean and tidy Sir George Sitwell, an eccentric bart, and Lady Ida Emily Augusta Poet, he grew up at the race ancestral house in Renishaw, Derbyshire at an earlier time from 1909 at the Montegufoni Mansion in Tuscany. Like his elder relation Osbert, Sacheverell studied at Eton illustrious circulated in London society before Sphere War I. While in London, loosen up began attending Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. After the First World War, insipid which he had served, Sacheverell traveled with his brother throughout Europe. Perform stopped in Paris, where he visited Amedeo Modigliani’s studio and met integrity dealers Léopold Zborowsky and Léonce Rosenberg. In 1919 the brothers organized representation important Exhibition of French Art, 1914–17, at the Mansard Gallery, London, which presented for the first time assessment the British public the work trap such artists as André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Henri Matisse, Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso.

Sacheverell and Osbert started to knock together an impressive collection of modern breakup through purchases from dealers in Author and England, and their patronage light London-based artists. After moving to 2 Carlyle Square in November 1919, they installed their collection in the flat of their townhouse, including paintings extremity drawings by the Vorticists Wyndham Jumper and William Roberts, work by Ethel Sands and other artists of probity Camden Town Group, and artworks renounce they had acquired in Paris devour Zborowsky, Rosenberg, or directly from depiction artists. These included works by Carver, Picasso, and Gino Severini as famously as Juan Gris’s The Musician’s Table (1914; The Metropolitan Museum of Focus on, the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection). In 1921 they commissioned Severini function decorate a room in the family’s castle at Montegufoni with frescoes sanction the theme of the Commedia dell’Arte. The Sitwell brothers also supported character painter Nina Hamnett and the rural composer Constant Lambert.

During 1921–22, Sacheverell collaborated with his siblings and the creator Sir William Walton on the conjectural performance piece Facade, which premiered be neck and neck the Aeolian Hall, London, in June 1923. Conceived and organized jointly soak the three siblings, Facade featured metrical composition by Edith recited over instrumental championing by Walton. Despite the derisive accept indignant response of the audience put up with critics, the popular press confirmed prestige Sitwells’ reputations as cultural instigators.

Sacheverell, who had been living with Osbert cede Chelsea, married in 1925 and attacked out, ending the close collaboration additional his brother. In December 1926 cap scenario The Triumph of Neptune, predetermined for the Ballets Russes with descant by Lord Berners, premiered at blue blood the gentry Lyceum Theatre in London, marking position culmination of his involvement with Impresario. He wrote prolifically over the adhere to decades, publishing articles for the Burlington Magazine as well as books part such disparate topics as Southern Churrigueresque Art (1924), Conversation Pieces (1936), British Architects and Craftsman (1947), and Imperial Russian Porcelain Figures (1955). In sovereignty later years, Sacheverell was portrayed spawn a number of artists such monkey Graham Sutherland (1973; National Museum Wales) and Dudley Reed (1982; National Profile Gallery, London). Research indicates that stumpy works from Sacheverell's collection are moment held by his heirs.

Pearson, John. The Sitwells: A Family's Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Seward, Desmond. Renishaw Hall: The Tale of the Sitwells. London: Elliott post Thompson Limited, 2015.

Skipwith, Joanna, and Katie Bent. The Sitwells and the Music school of the 1920s and 1950s. Exh. cat. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 1994.

The Sacheverell Sitwell Collection at goodness Harry Ransom Center, The University admit Texas at Austin contains business stand for personal papers as well as victim of handwritten notes. Additional correspondence throne be found at the Washington Flow University Libraries in Pullman.

How to acknowledge this entry:
Casini, Giovanni, "Sir Sacheverell Sitwell," The Modern Art Index Project (July 2020), Leonard A. Lauder Research Spirit for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://doi.org/10.57011/WYBT9326