Rex Whistler and the Bright Young Things: curious friendships

Reginald Whistler (1905-44) was born in Kent and soon nicknamed Rex. As a teenager he was sent to boarding school at Haileybury where he quickly learned his skills in art. After high school, the young Whistler was accepted at the Royal Acad­emy, but did not fit within the conditions set for students.

Going instead to the Slade School of Art, Whistler met Stephen Tennant (1906–1987), soon to become one of his best friends. Through Tennant, Whistler later met the poet Siegfried Sassoon and, as we shall see, Edith Olivier. Except for being a peer of the realm and a cousin of Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde's lover), I cannot find what Stephen Tennant actually did with his time.

Whistler, on the other hand, was very busy. His oeuvre covered art projects of very different types, including book illustration, paintings on canvas, theatrical and ballet sets, murals and posters. Most Whistler fans were probably not aware that he also created designs for Wedgwood china.

Whistler might have been born into a modest middle class family but was regularly invited into the homes of the noble and the fashionable to paint portraits, especially for the Marquess of Anglesey and Countess Edwina Mountbatten. And his friendship with Stephen Tennant introduced Whistler into the glamorous world of the Bright Young Things. These members of London Society included poet Edith Sitwell and photographer Cecil Beaton.

From left: Rex Whistler, Edith Olivier, Zita Jungman, Hon Stephen Tennant, Cecil Beaton 

South of  France, March 1927.
Photo credit: Pin It 

Stephen Tenant was gay, and had a wonderful sexual affair with Siegfried Sassoon from the late 1920s to the early 1930s. Stephen Tennant also inspired and assisted Cecil Beaton for many years and was the lover on whom Beaton modelled himself on in many ways. In the summer of 1930 Beaton met art collector Peter Watson, who Truman Capote described as the only great love of Beaton’s life. Cecil became obsessed with Watson for the next four years. Later Greta Garbo declared her love and sexual passion for Cecil and they discussed marriage.

Poet Edith Sitwell (1887– 1964) was never married and shared a flat with her the governess she had had since adolescence. In 1927 she was emotionally committed to a gay Russian painter and stayed with him for a few years. Then in 1932, she went with her governess to Paris, where they lived with the governess’s sister. Edith’s easily identified portrait (below) was painted by Roger Fry, and was photographed by Cecil Beaton.

Rex Whistler’s sexual preferences were not clear. He wavered on the subject of having an affair with Stephen Tennant, but was glad that they had never had sex, as it would have complicated their friendship. He indulged a brief, doomed infatuation for young Penelope Dudley-Ward, whose portrait he had been commissioned to paint. He developed a more enduring passion for the beautiful Lady Caroline Paget. Too poor, as he thought, to propose marriage, he seems to have specialised in hopeless relationships. He did manage to consummate a liaison with Tallulah Bankhead, and carried on affairs of some sort with a succession of unhappily married Society women.

Why did Whistler join the army when war broke out in 1939? He was too old to see active duty and could have worked as an Official War Artist. Yet he chose to work as a burial officer. In 1944 he was sent to France following the D-Day landings and was killed during his first day of action.


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So who was Edith Olivier and why was she important to Whistler? Read the Martin Williams review of the book A Curious Friendship: The Story of a Bluestocking and a Bright Young Thing written by Anna Thomasson (Macmillan 2015). Curious is the word for the friendship that flourished between the middle-aged spinster Edith Olivier (1872–1948) and the talented young painter Rex Whistler during the mid 1920s. To understand what made their meetings of minds so unique, a degree of context is required.

Edith Olivier
Mayor of Wilton (1939-1940)
painted by Rex Whistler
67 x 49 cm.
Wilton Town Council

Olivier’s background could not have been more typically Victorian. The 8th of 10 children of a rector, she was educated at home in a secluded and sedate life. Although she succeeded in winning a schol­arship to Oxford, she ultimately returned to act as a companion to her elderly mother and then to her adored sister Mildred. When Mil­dred died of cancer in 1924, Edith appeared to have lost the interest that had animated her life.

On holiday in Italy, to which she want as chaperone to that brightest of the Bright Young Things, Stephen Tennant, Edith was introduced to Rex Whistler, 30 years her junior and soon to make a name for himself as an artist enjoying immense popularity with the fashionable set of the day. For both him and Edith, the acquaintance was to prove transformational.

Through Rex, Edith was embraced as an intimate by the likes of Cecil Beaton, Siegfried Sassoon and the Sitwells. A late-blooming novelist of note (her most famous work The Love Child appeared in 1927), she was photographed for Vogue and became much sought after for her wit and warm hospitality. The clergyman’s daughter from rural Wiltshire could not have expected this glamour and excitement to follow her friendship with Whistler and the others.

portrait of Edith Sitwell

by Roger Fry, during WW1

Sheffield Galleries

Was she jealous of Whistler's other relationships? In one of his letters, Rex reassured her that despite his desire for the Dudley Ward girl, everything would ‘be the same as before between you and me … only lovelier’.

But it was always to Rex, her Gift From God, that Edith remained closest. When he was killed on active service in France in 1944, she was hearbroken. The book A Curious Friendship is a tale of colour and creativity, but also of hope and redemption.