Edith Sitwell

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Edith Sitwell

by Bill Brandt
bromide print, 1945
12 3/4 in. x 11 in. (323 mm x 278 mm)
Purchased, 1970
Photographs Collection
NPG x9231

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Bill Brandt (1904-1983), Photographer. Artist or producer of 120 portraits, Sitter in 34 portraits.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Clerk, Honor, The Sitwells, 1994 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 14 October - 22 January 1995), p. 142 Read entry

    Edith spent most of the Second World War at Renishaw with Osbert. The intense cold of the house made overcoats a necessity inside and neither of them would appear downstairs before lunchtime. In the evenings they listened to records on the wind-up gramophone while Edith knitted. Among their visitors during the war years were Evelyn Waugh, John Piper, Bryher and Alec Guinness, who described Renishaw as 'that extraordinary house with its oil lamps and creaking stairs and miles of corridors and haunted rooms'.1 The photograph appeared in American Harper's Bazaar in October 1948 to celebrate Edith's arrival in the United States.

    1 Quoted in John Pearson, Façades, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, 1978, p 348.

Placesback to top

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Subjects & Themesback to top

Events of 1945back to top

Current affairs

Despite Churchill's popularity during, and indeed after, the War, Clement Attlee wins a landslide Labour victory in the general election. Labour's success was due to its promise of a better society through the Welfare state, and was demonstrative of the public's desire for a new and better post-War society.

Art and science

Noel Coward's Brief Encounter is released. The film, based on Coward's play, Still Life, is about the love affair between two married people who meet at a railway station. Conscious of the risk of being caught the couple decide to break off their relationship to protect their marriages.
George Orwell publishes his satirical novel Animal Farm, as an allegorical critique of Soviet Totalitarianism.

International

A war on two fronts finally proves too much for Germany as allied forces push from the East and West. On the 30th April Hitler committed suicide and Germany soon surrendered to Soviet troops. Victory in Europe was announced on the 8th May. War in the Pacific continued until America dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 214,000 people, and ending the war with Japan.

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