Dame Edith Sitwell (also Louisa)

Best known as a modernist poet and critic, Edith Sitwell also became a patron of the arts after the First World War along with her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell. She also established herself as a nonconformist intellectual and champion of modernism in literature, the visual arts, and music.

The child of Sir George Sitwell, an eccentric baronet, and Lady Ida Emily Augusta Sitwell, Edith grew up in the family ancestral house in Renishaw, Derbyshire and from 1909 at the Montegufoni Castle in Tuscany. She developed an interest in literature in 1903 when Helen Rootham, an aspiring poet, was engaged as her governess. Eager to escape her conservative upbringing and in spite of the difficulties that being a woman posed at the time, Edith moved to London in 1913. Though she lived on a very modest income, she quickly became part of the active literary scene in the city.

In 1916, in collaboration with the poet and collector Nancy Cunard, she founded Wheels, an annual anthology that promoted alternative literary trends against the prevailing style of Georgian verse. During 1921–22, Edith collaborated with her brothers and the composer Sir William Walton on the experimental performance piece Facade, which premiered at the Aeolian Hall, London, in June 1923. Conceived and organized jointly by the three siblings, Facade featured poems by Edith recited over instrumental accompaniment by Walton. Despite the derisive and indignant response of the audience and critics, the popular press confirmed the Sitwells’ reputations as cultural instigators.

From 1924 Sitwell frequently visited Paris. There, she befriended Gertrude Stein and broadened her social network. Through Stein, she met the Russian artist Pavel Tchelitchew in 1927 and became his muse and patron. Edith’s austere features were consecrated in portraits by Roger Fry (1918; Sheffield City Art Galleries), Alvaro Guevara (1916; Tate Britain), Wyndham Lewis (1923-35; Tate Britain), Tchelitchew (1927; National Portrait Gallery, London), and Reginald John Whistler (1929; private collection) as well as in iconic photographs by Cecil Beaton, indicating the extent of her involvement with visual artists. In the 1930s and until the outbreak of World War II, Edith lived in Paris. During this time she continued to write, though shifted genres from poetry to historical narrative, publishing, for example, Fanfare for Elizabeth (1946) on the Queen Elizabeth I's early years.

In the late 1940s Edith and Osbert lived together in the Sitwell family country house, Renishaw Hall, and travelled to the United States on book tours, which confirmed their reputations. Sitwell spent the final years of her life in London.