Hedwig Pillitz (lots 31-39)

Introduction
We know frustratingly little of the talented Hedwig Pillitz who excelled as a portraitist, particularly portraits of those in the performing arts, notably leading actors and musicians. Born in Hampstead Hedwig was the eldest daughter of Arpad Armin Pillitz (1867-1948), and Josephine Fischer (1876) who had emigrated to England from Hungary. Both she and her younger sister Doris attended South Hampstead High School for girls. There Hedwig excelled at art and Doris in music and drama.

The sisters’ considerable accomplishments are mentioned in the 1926 South Hampstead High School Magazine Jubilee Number where they are listed as members of the school’s Past and Present Club. Doris was praised for her musical contribution at the Old Girls’ Dinner in July that year, and the ‘Art’ report records that Hedwig had exhibited a landscape in the 1926 ‘Paris Salon’. Elsewhere, under the heading ‘Recent News’ it was noted that Hedwig was showing a flower piece and a landscape at the Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Gallery, Liverpool and that Doris had gained a First Class degree in acting at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art; was the winner of the second year students’ Diction Competition, and had been awarded a prize for verse recital at the 1926 Oxford Recitations.

A year on Doris is a cast member in the 1927-28 season at the Old Vic, performing in Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. It may well have been through Doris that Hedwig met ‘Yorkie’, also an actor at the Old Vic, whose portrait she painted whilst living at 28 Abercorn Place, St John’s Wood (lot 39), and at which address she also painted the dashing Michael Lane (lot 35). Hedwig attracted notable female sitters too as the lots in the present sale attest. Among them, the striking Marguerite Kelsey, a professional model in considerable demand among painters of the day (lot 31), and Russian born Shulamith Shafir, a distinguished concert pianist who made her English concerto debut in 1936 aged just thirteen, and first appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in 1941 (lot 33).

With many of Pillitz’s sitters being artists and performers, it is not surprising perhaps to find that of her few paintings in public collections, the best is also of an actor: Dorothy Black in the role of Emily Brontë in The Brontes (Victoria & Albert Museum). Hedwig painted Black in the lead role in 1933, the year that the play, written by Alfred Sangster, transferred from Sheffield to the Royalty Theatre, London. All Hedwig’s paintings in the present sale seem to have been painted from the late 1920s through until the 1950s.


HEDWIG PILLITZ (BRITISH - HUNGARIAN 1896-1987)
PORTRAIT OF MARGUERITE KELSEY
oil on canvas
62.3 x 49.5cm; 24 1/2 x 19 1/2in
(unframed)

With her high cheek bones, fine features and cropped-back hair set off by her striking lime-green necklace, plunging neck line and viridian dress, Pillitz captures Kelsey with the contemporary poise and elegance for which she became noted. Kelsey started modelling at the age of fifteen and quickly became popular amongst artists for her ability to hold poses for a long time. The best-known likeness of her is by Meredith Frampton of 1928 in Tate Britain. Sitting upright on a settee with her legs behind, her gaze averted and wearing a white dress with red shoes she is the epitome of contemporary refinement. Kelsey also sat for Sir William Reid Dick, Sir John Lavery, Augustus John and Dame Ethel Walker amongst many other painters of the day.