Sir Sacheverell Sitwell

Sacheverell Sitwell was an art and music critic, and a scholar of architecture, particularly of the Baroque period. After the First World War, with his siblings Edith and Osbert, he became a patron of the arts and a collector, and established himself 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, he grew up at the family ancestral house in Renishaw, Derbyshire and from 1909 at the Montegufoni Castle in Tuscany. Like his elder brother Osbert, Sacheverell studied at Eton and circulated in London society before World War I. While in London, he began attending Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. After the First World War, in which he had served, Sacheverell travelled with his brother throughout Europe. He stopped in Paris, where he visited Amedeo Modigliani’s studio and met the dealers Léopold Zborowsky and Léonce Rosenberg. In 1919 the brothers organized the important Exhibition of French Art, 1914–17, at the Mansard Gallery, London, which presented for the first time to the British public the work of such artists as André Derain, Raoul Dufy, Henri Matisse, Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso.

Sacheverell and Osbert started to build an impressive collection of modern art through purchases from dealers in France and England, and their patronage of London-based artists. After moving to 2 Carlyle Square in November 1919, they installed their collection in the rooms of their townhouse, including paintings and drawings by the Vorticists Wyndham Lewis and William Roberts, work by Ethel Sands and other artists of the Camden Town Group, and artworks that they had acquired in Paris from Zborowsky, Rosenberg, or directly from the artists. These included works by Modigliani, Picasso, and Gino Severini as well as Juan Gris’s The Musician’s Table (1914; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection). In 1921 they commissioned Severini to decorate a room in the family’s castle at Montegufoni with frescoes on the theme of the Commedia dell’Arte. The Sitwell brothers also supported the painter Nina Hamnett and the young composer Constant Lambert.

During 1921–22, Sacheverell collaborated with his siblings 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.

Sacheverell, who had been living with Osbert in Chelsea, married in 1925 and moved out, ending the close collaboration with his brother. In December 1926 his scenario The Triumph of Neptune, written for the Ballets Russes with music by Lord Berners, premiered at the Lyceum Theatre in London, marking the culmination of his involvement with Diaghilev. He wrote prolifically over the next decades, publishing articles for the Burlington Magazine as well as books on such disparate topics as Southern Baroque Art (1924), Conversation Pieces (1936), British Architects and Craftsman (1947), and Imperial Russian Porcelain Figures (1955). In his later years, Sacheverell was portrayed by a number of artists such as Graham Sutherland (1973; National Museum Wales) and Dudley Reed (1982; National Portrait Gallery, London). Research indicates that some works from Sacheverell's collection are now held by his heirs.