Margot Asquith

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Margot Asquith

by Baron Adolph de Meyer
vintage bromide print, 1922
17 1/8 in. x 13 7/8 in. (435 mm x 352 mm)
Purchased, 1981
Primary Collection
NPG P166

On display in Room 24 on Floor 2 at the National Portrait Gallery

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Baron Adolph de Meyer (1868-1946), Photographer. Artist or producer associated with 18 portraits, Sitter in 2 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Gibson, Robin; Clerk, Honor, 20th Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery Collection, 1993, p. 8 Read entry

    ‘Unteachable and splendid', Margot Asquith was a leader of taste and fashion for most of her long and colourful life. Her volumes of autobiography and memoirs, her novel and essays, are largely forgotten, but stories of her bons mots are legion. A puritan at heart and a moralist in practice and in print, she was catholic in her acquaintances and knew most of the leading thinkers and politicians of her day. In 1894 she married, as his second wife, Herbert Asquith, Liberal politician and (from 1908-16) Prime Minister.

    A man of deliberately mysterious origins, de Meyer was brought up in Paris but lived in England until, suspected of German sympathies, he left for New York with his wife Olga at the outbreak of the First World War. In America he was employed by Condé Nast and his elegant, aesthetic photographs, which had been all the rage in Europe, began to appear in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 475

Subjects & Themesback to top

Events of 1922back to top

Current affairs

The British Broadcasting Company (later British Broadcasting Corporation) is established to experiment with radio broadcasting. It is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world, providing radio, television and Internet services to the public in Britain and across the world.

Art and science

1922 is a key year for modernist literature with the publication of James Joyce's novel, Ulysses and T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land. Both broke new ground with Ulysses (loosely based on Homer's Odyssey) introducing the 'stream of consciousness' narrative technique, and The Waste Land experimenting with multiple voices and a patchwork of literary, historic, mythological and personal allusions.

International

The Soviet Union is formed under Joseph Stalin who takes power after Lenin suffers a debilitating stroke.
In an attempt to avoid civil war, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy invites Benito Mussolini to form a new government following the Fascist Party's March on Rome.

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