Garman sisters

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The Garman sisters were members of the bohemian Bloomsbury set in London between the wars. The complex lives of Mary, Kathleen and Lorna included affairs with the writer Vita Sackville-West, the composer Ferruccio Busoni, the painter Bernard Meninsky, the sculptor Jacob Epstein (whom Kathleen married), the poet Laurie Lee and the painter Lucian Freud [1]

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Biographies

Mary (1898–1979)

Mary Margaret Garman was the eldest of the sisters. Along with her sister Kathleen she ran away to London, where they lived in a one-room studio at 13 Regent Square on the edge of Bloomsbury. Mary was married to the penniless South African poet Roy Campbell from 1924 until he was killed in a car crash in Portugal in 1957. [1]

Kathleen (1901–1979)

Kathleen Garman, the third sister, married Jacob Epstein in 1955. She had been his lover since 1921 and had three children by him. Epstein's jealous wife Margaret had shot and wounded Kathleen in 1923, and encouraged him into multiple affairs in the hope that he would tire of Kathleen and "return home". [1] Six years after Margaret's death, Kathleen became Lady Epstein and, after his death, she was his sole beneficiary. She donated his works to the Israel Museum, and many can now be seen in the Garman Ryan Collection at the New Art Gallery in Walsall. Her daughter Kitty Garman married the painter Lucian Freud, who was a former lover of Lorna Garman, Kathleen's sister and Kitty's aunt.

Douglas (1903–1969)

Their brother Douglas Mavin Garman was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, and educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Following graduation, he spent much of his time in London and Paris, alongside a brief sojourn in Leningrad in 1926. It was during this period that he assisted in editing The Calendar of Modern Letters , and contributed articles to it. [2] Of left-wing sympathies, he worked during the 1930s for the Marxist publishers Lawrence and Wishart, and thereafter rose to become the Education Secretary of the British Communist Party, remaining in situ until 1950. He was also a member of the original Left Review circle. His first wife, Jean Sophie Hewitt, had an affair with his sister Mary and he became one of the lovers of the art collector Peggy Guggenheim.

Helen (born 1906)

Helen Francesca Garman, number six, married a Provençal fisherman called Polge. Her daughter Kathy (born 1931) married Laurie Lee, who was formerly engaged in an affair with the last Garman sister, Lorna. [3]

Lorna (1911–2000)

Lorna Cecilia Garman married the publisher Ernest Wishart when she was 16 with whom she had a son, the painter Michael Wishart. Throughout the marriage she had affairs. The writer Laurie Lee fathered her third child, and during her affair with the painter Lucian Freud [1] she modelled for many of his paintings and brought him objects, such as a dead heron and a zebra head, to be inserted in his pictures.

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurie Lee</span> English writer

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Garman is a surname or first name. Notable people with the name include:

Mary Margaret Garman Campbell (1898–1979) was the eldest of seven sisters known for their glamorous, bohemian lifestyles and their many love affairs with famous artists, writers, and musicians of interwar London. She was a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the wife of the radical South African poet Roy Campbell, who attacked the group in The Georgiad (1931), a response to his wife's lesbian affair with Vita Sackville-West.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathleen Garman</span> British model

Kathleen Esther Garman, Lady Epstein was the third of the seven Garman sisters, who were high-profile members of artistic circles in mid-20th century London, renowned for their beauty and scandalous behaviour. She was the model and longtime mistress of British/American sculptor Jacob Epstein, and eventually his second wife. They met in 1921 and immediately began a relationship that lasted until Epstein's death and produced three of Epstein's five children. Their daughter, Kitty Garman, was the first wife of Lucian Freud; their son was the artist Theodore Garman.

Lorna Cecilia Wishart, née Garman was the youngest of the nine children of Walter Garman, an eccentric medical doctor, and his wife Margaret. Lorna, her six sisters and her two brothers grew up at Oakeswell Hall, Wednesbury, and then became prominent in the Bohemian Bloomsbury set in London between the two world wars. Lorna in particular had affairs with the poet Laurie Lee and the painter Lucian Freud. Her character may be summed up in this quotation from Cressida Connolly:

Lorna, the baby of the family, was perhaps the most flamboyant of the fabulous Garmans. She wore beautiful and unusual clothes, and smelled of Chanel No. 5, went riding on her horse at night, drove a chocolate-brown Bentley, and would strip naked to swim in inviting lakes or rivers or 10-metre waves. At 14 she seduced the man who would become her husband when she was 16, the publisher Ernest Wishart.

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Sarah "Sally" Tack Ryan was an American artist and sculptor best known for portrait style pieces and her association with the Garman Ryan Collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garman Ryan Collection</span>

The Garman Ryan Collection is a permanent collection of art works housed at The New Art Gallery Walsall and comprises 365 works of art, including prints, sketches, sculptures, drawings and paintings collected by Kathleen Garman and lifelong friend Sally Ryan.

<i>Portrait of Kitty</i> Painting by Lucian Freud

Portrait of Kitty is a painting by Lucian Freud of Kitty Garman, his wife and the eldest daughter of the sculptor Jacob Epstein and Kathleen Garman. Completed between 1948 and 1949, this oil on board measures 35 by 24 centimetres.

Theodore Garman, known as Theo, was an English painter of the mid-20th century.

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Cressida Curzon Wentworth-Stanley is an English actress and model.

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Sunita Devi, real name Armina Peerbhoy, generally known just as Sunita, was a model for the sculptor Jacob Epstein in London. Her death in India on 3 November 1932 was believed by some to be a political assassination.

John Michael Wishart known as Michael Wishart, was an English figurative painter who spent most of his career in France, America and North Africa. A friend of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, he published a memoir in 1977 entitled High Diver, which caused a scandal with its description of his bohemian lifestyle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kitty Garman</span> English artist

Kathleen Eleonora "Kitty" Garman, later Kitty Epstein and Kitty Godley, was a British artist and muse. She was a model for her father Jacob Epstein, her first husband Lucian Freud, and Andrew Tift. In 2004 she had her own show at The New Art Gallery Walsall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yasmin David</span> British landscape painter

Yasmin David (1939–2009) was a British landscape painter. She was the daughter of Lorna Garman Wishart and Laurie Lee. Many of her works were only exhibited posthumously. Since her death her daughter, documentary filmmaker Clio David, discovered over 200 unseen paintings and drawings hidden in a cupboard in her mother’s studio at the family home in Devon, leading to a solo exhibition of her work at The New Art Gallery Walsall in 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans; by Cressida Connolly, Fourth Estate
  2. ↑ "Papers of Douglas Garman (1903-1969), communist, writer and educationalist". Archives Hub. Retrieved 17 March 2024.
  3. ↑ Grove, Valerie (30 May 2014). "Fiercely unconventional and rampantly seductive: Lorna Wishart, the muse who made Laurie Lee". New Statesman . Retrieved 2 May 2017.

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