Sir William Turner Walton

1 portrait of Sir William Turner Walton

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Sir William Turner Walton

by Rex Whistler
pencil, 1929
10 3/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. (274 mm x 242 mm)
Given by Sir (Francis) Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Bt, 1968
Primary Collection
NPG 4640

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Linked publicationsback to top

  • Clerk, Honor, The Sitwells, 1994 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 14 October - 22 January 1995), p. 98 Read entry

    Life with Osbert and Sacheverell at Carlyle Square had many advantages for the young composer, despite Osbert's occasional disapproval of his piano playing, which 'never very much improved'.1 They regularly took him abroad with them and spared no effort to further his career. An introduction to Diaghilev came to nothing,2 but Lord Berners and Constant Lambert became firm friends of Walton and in 1923 Walton, Osbert and Sacheverell joined Berners in Salzburg for the International Festival of Modern Music where Walton's string quartet was to be performed. At Salzburg they also encountered Alban Berg and Arnold Schönberg, while in London Walton introduced the Sitwells to Philip Heseltine and George Gershwin.3

    By 1929 Walton was enjoying his succès d'estime as the composer of Façade in the same way that Whistler was known as the painter of the Tate Gallery restaurant murals (1927). They both formed part of the circle of 'bright young things' round Stephen Tennant, with whom Whistler had formed an association at the Slade. In the spring of 1929 Tennant invited them all to Garmisch in Bavaria to stay with him at Haus Hirth, a sort of aristocratic guest house run by Walter and Johanna Hirth, where Tennant was undergoing treatment for his health. While Walton put the finishing touches to his Viola Concerto, Whistler relaxed and drew a little, including this portrait.4

    The drawing was apparently damaged in an air raid in 1940 and on Whistler's death in Normany in 1944 it passed to Osbert Sitwell, who used it to illustrate Laughter in the Next Room,5 and subsequently presented it to the National Portrait Gallery.

    1 Osbert Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room, 1949, p 176.

    2 John Pearson, Façades, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, 1978, p 212.

    3 Osbert Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room, 1949, pp 178-9, 182.

    4 L. Whistler, The Laughter and the Urn, 1985, pp 136-8.

    5 Osbert Sitwell, Laughter in the Next Room, 1949, f.p. 176.

  • Robin Muir, Cecil Beaton's Bright Young Things, 2020 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 12 March to 7 June 2020), p. 141

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Events of 1929back to top

Current affairs

The first election held under universal suffrage is a victory for Labour. Ramsay Macdonald returned for his second term as Prime Minster, and appointed Margaret Grace Bondfield as the first woman Cabinet Minister.

Art and science

Two classic books about the First World War are published: All Quiet on the Western Front, by war veteran, Erich Maria Remarque, tells of the horrors of war and the returning German soldiers' feelings of detachment from civilian life; while Robert Grave's autobiography Goodbye to All That, aimed to describe the author's experiences of the war so that they 'need never be thought about again'.

International

The 24th October 1929 becomes known as Black Thursday when the US Stock Exchange Collapses and millions are lost. The event was the start of the Wall Street Crash, which in turn contributed towards the Great Depression: a major international recession that lasted through most of the 1930s.

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