W.H. Lane & Son
Lot 60
Sir Samuel Luke FILDES (1843-1927)
Oil on canvas
‘Portrait of Winifred Ellerman’ (1894-1983) (aka Annie Winifred Ellerman whose pen name was Bryher
Inscribed in black ink on the backing board
Signed and dated 1914
41” x 31” (104cm x 78.7cm)
Note: The sitter was the daughter of Sir John Ellerman (1862-1933) shipping tycoon and financier who was the richest man in the United Kingdom at the time of his death. Winifred was 20/21 years old at the time the portrait was completed. It was probably commissioned for her ‘coming of age’.
Note on the artist: Sir Samuel Luke Fildes originally produced illustrations for ‘The Graphic’ magazine but gave up working for the magazine in 1870. He turned his full attention to oil painting. He took rank among the ablest English painters, with The Casual Ward (1874), The Widower (1876), The Village Wedding (1883), An Al-fresco Toilette (1889); & The Doctor (1891), all now in Tate Britain. He also painted a number of pictures of Venetian life and many notable portraits, among the best known being portraits commemorating the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (A.R.A.) in 1879, and a Royal Academician (R.A.) in 1887; and was knighted by King Edward VII in 1906. In 1918 he was appointed as Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order by King George V.
Provenance: Exhibited Royal Academy 1915 No.27
Illustrated
Annie Winifred Ellerman was born in September 1894 in Margate to the shipping magnate and financier John Ellerman who at the time of his death was the richest Englishman who ever lived. He lived with Winifred’s mother, Anna Glover, but did not marry her until 1908, 14 years after Winifred’s birth. John Ellerman had little interest in public recognition and his lifestyle was unostentatious. As a child, Winifred travelled widely to France, Italy and Egypt and the Mediterranean and on occasions on family holidays to the island of Bryher one of the Scilly Islands. She later used the pseudonym ‘Bryher’, her favourite island, as her pen name. This name she used for the remainder of her writing career as well as everything else she participated in to free herself from the bonds and obligations on what it was meant to ‘be an Ellerman’.
During the 1920’s Bryher was an unconventional figure in Paris and among her circle friends was Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach and Berenice Abbott. Her wealth enabled her to give financial support to struggling writers including Joyce and Edith Sitwell. She also helped with finance with Sylvia Beach’s book shop ‘Shakespeare and Company’ and certain publishing ventures. She started a film company ‘Pool Group’ and provided funds to purchase a flat in Paris for the destitute Dada artist and writer Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Another member of this group was Hilda Doolittle the celebrated imagist poet known as H.D who became Bryher’s life-long partner for more than 40 years, until her death in 1961. Bryher helped to raise H.D’s daughter, Perdita, (who became Mrs John Schaffner of New York), later Bryher’s adopted daughter and heir. Although she married twice, Winifred had no questions about her sexuality and explored that aspect of life to the fullest. On a trip to America in 1921, she married her first husband Robert McAlmon to escape the control of her parents. At that time she moved with H.D. to Switzerland with H.D’s daughter. In 1927 Bryher divorced McAlmon and married Kenneth Macpherson who was also H.D’s lover. They adopted H.D’s daughter, Perdita. Together Macpherson, H.D. and Bryher not only founded the film company ‘Pool Group’ but also the advant-garde cinema journal ‘Close-Up’. Bryher herself appeared in a film ‘Borderline’ in 1930.
In 1933 Bryher wrote an article in the ‘Close-Up’ ‘What Shall we do in the War?’ where she wrote about the situation of Jews in Germany, urging readers to take action. Her home in Switzerland became a receiving station for refugees and she helped more than 100 people from Nazi persecution, before being forced to flee herself in 1940. They included intellectuals, analysts, artists and their families. She also established the Hanns Sachs Training Fund for refugee analysts arriving in the US. During the Second World War she lived in London.
Bryher wrote poems and literary criticism but is better known for historical novels. The first of these she wrote 1952 when she was 58 years old. Most are set in Britain during various eras including the Roman. They are considered to be well researched and vivid set in times of turmoil and scenes from a perspective of a young man. They were acclaimed in her own time and in recent times have been re-discovered and re-printed
In summary: - Selina E. Kusch wrote in the ‘The Bryher Chronology’ in 2014 - “Bryher was an avid supporter and vocal advocate of international film, psychoanalysis, political freedom, anti fascism, progress in myriad forms and just plain modernity”. A remarkable woman of her time a corner stone of modernism as an artistic movement who cared little for normal social conventions.
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