Garman Sisters
Encyclopedia
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
Bloomsbury set
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
. The complex lives of Mary
Mary Garman
Mary Margaret Garman Campbell 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...
, Kathleen
Kathleen Garman
Kathleen Garman, Lady Epstein was the third of the seven notorious Garman sisters, who were high profile members of artistic circles in mid-twentieth century London, renowned for their beauty and scandalousness. She was the muse and longtime mistress of Jacob Epstein, the famous British/American...
and Lorna
Lorna Garman
Lorna Cecilia Garman Wishart was the youngest of the seven daughters of Walter and Margaret Garman, an eccentric Victorian doctor, led notoriously high profile lives within mid 20th century artistic circles....
included affairs with writer Vita Sackville-West
Vita Sackville-West
The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933...
, composer Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
, painter Bernard Meninsky
Bernard Meninsky
Bernard Meninsky was a figurative artist, painter of figures and landscape in oils, watercolour and gouache, draughtsman and teacher. He was born in Karotopin now in the Ukraine but raised in Liverpool where he attended the Liverpool School of Art in 1906 after initially attending evening classes...
, sculptor Jacob Epstein
Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein KBE was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911. He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter...
, poet Laurie Lee
Laurie Lee
Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie , As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and...
and painter Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
Mary (1898-1979)
Mary Margaret GarmanMary Garman
Mary Margaret Garman Campbell 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...
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 in Camden
Camden Town
-Economy:In recent years, entertainment-related businesses and a Holiday Inn have moved into the area. A number of retail and food chain outlets have replaced independent shops driven out by high rents and redevelopment. Restaurants have thrived, with the variety of culinary traditions found in...
on the outskirts of Bloomsbury
Bloomsbury
-Places:* Bloomsbury is an area in central London.* Bloomsbury , related local government unit* Bloomsbury, New Jersey, New Jersey, USA* Bloomsbury , listed on the NRHP in Maryland...
. Mary was married to the penniless South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n poet Roy Campbell
Roy Campbell (poet)
Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell, was an Anglo-African poet and satirist. He was considered by T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell to have been one of the best poets of the period between the First and Second World Wars...
from 1924 until he was killed in a car crash in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
in 1957.
Kathleen (1901-1979)
Kathleen GarmanKathleen Garman
Kathleen Garman, Lady Epstein was the third of the seven notorious Garman sisters, who were high profile members of artistic circles in mid-twentieth century London, renowned for their beauty and scandalousness. She was the muse and longtime mistress of Jacob Epstein, the famous British/American...
, the third sister, married Sir Jacob Epstein
Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein KBE was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911. He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter...
in 1955. She had been his lover since 1925 and mothered three children by him, during which period Epstein's jealous wife Margaret shot and wounded Kathleen and encouraged him into multiple affairs in the hope he would tire of Kathleen and "return home." Six years after Margaret's death, Kathleen became Lady Epstein and his sole beneficiary. She donated his works to the Israel Museum
Israel Museum
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem was founded in 1965 as Israel's national museum. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, near the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
, and many can now be seen in the Garman Ryan Collection at the New Art Gallery
Walsall Art Gallery
The New Art Gallery Walsall is a modern and contemporary art gallery sited in the centre of the West Midlands town of Walsall, England. It was built with £21 million of public funding, including £15.75 million from the UK National Lottery and additional money from the European Regional Development...
in Walsall
Walsall
Walsall is a large industrial town in the West Midlands of England. It is located northwest of Birmingham and east of Wolverhampton. Historically a part of Staffordshire, Walsall is a component area of the West Midlands conurbation and part of the Black Country.Walsall is the administrative...
. Her daughter Kitty married Lucian Freud, who was a former lover of Lorna Garman, Kitty's aunt.
Lorna (1911-2000)
Lorna Cecilia GarmanLorna Garman
Lorna Cecilia Garman Wishart was the youngest of the seven daughters of Walter and Margaret Garman, an eccentric Victorian doctor, led notoriously high profile lives within mid 20th century artistic circles....
married the wealthy publisher Ernest Wishart when she was 16. Throughout the marriage she had affairs, which included the writer Laurie Lee
Laurie Lee
Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie , As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and...
who fathered her third child, and the painter Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
, for whom she modelled in many of his paintings, and for whom she brought gifts such as a dead heron and a zebra head. Freud went on to marry her niece, Kitty Epstein (daughter of Kathleen), the subject of Freud's Girl with a White Dog.
Sources
- The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans by Cressida Connolly, Fourth Estate
- Family Profile, book review and photographic images of Mary, Lorna and Kathleen