Vita Sackville-West
(1892-1962), Writer and gardener; wife of Sir Harold NicolsonVictoria Mary ('Vita') Sackville-West
Sitter associated with 29 portraits
Vita Sackville-West was born at Knole, Kent. Like her husband Harold Nicolson, Sackville-West was a prolific author and her publications include Knole and the Sackvilles (1922) about her birthplace and ancestry, the long poem The Land (1926), and the novel, All Passion Spent (1931). Her disappointment at being unable, as a woman, to inherit the Knole estate found positive expression in her subsequent collaboration with Nicolson on the garden of their home at Sissinghurst Castle. Her affair with Violet Trefusis, and her later relationship with Virginia Woolf, which inspired Woolf to write historical-fantasy novel Orlando (1928), provided the backdrop for her marriage to Nicolson.
by John Gay
bromide fibre print, 1948
NPG x47302
by John Gay
vintage bromide print, 1948
NPG x126519
by John Gay
vintage bromide print, 1948
NPG x126520
Victoria Mary ('Vita') Sackville-West
by Norman Parkinson
digital chromogenic print, 1949
NPG x200081
by Walter Stoneman
bromide print, 1957
NPG x28912
by Cecil Beaton
bromide print on white card mount, 1958
NPG x14197
by Kurt Hutton (Kurt Hubschman)
bromide print, 1961
NPG x194025
Arthur David Waley; Vita Sackville-West; Sir Osbert Sitwell; Edith Sitwell; Walter de la Mare
by Unknown photographer
bromide print, 14 April 1943
NPG x45793
Related People
- Adam Nicolson, 5th Baron Carnock (grandson)
- Benedict Nicolson (son)
- Sir Harold George Nicolson (husband)
- Nigel Nicolson (son)
- Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville (father)
- Charles Sackville-West, 4th Baron Sackville (uncle)
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Anne Matthews
04 September 2019, 23:18
Jane Bown photographed Vita Sackville-West in 1960. Reference ‘Exposures’, pub. 2009 by Guardian books. Arresting images of later life.