Alix Strachey (née Sargant-Florence) (1892-1973) by Barbara Ker-Seymer and John Banting, 1930s
© reserved; collection National Portrait Gallery, London.
NPG x13130
Born in Nutley, New Jersey, Strachey was the daughter of the British artist Mary Sargant-Florence. After studying at the Slade School and Newnham College, Cambridge she moved in with her brother in his Bloomsbury house. Whilst attending the weekly Bloomsbury Salons she met the psychoanalyst James Strachey and they married in 1920. Alix followed her husband into psychoanalysis and the pair moved to Vienna where they worked extensively with Freud. She is shown here photographed by Barbara Ker-Seymer, a Surrealist photographer who photographed many of the English avant-garde.