Hedwig Pillitz (lots 72-82)

Introduction
We know frustratingly little of the Hedwig Pillitz who excelled as a portraitist, and we often have scant information on her sitters. But she clearly had a cultured upbringing, was a talented portraitist, and was drawn instinctively to those in the arts - actors, musicians and writers.

Born in Hampstead, Hedwig was the eldest daughter of Arpad Armin Pillitz (1867-1947) and his wife Josephine (née Fischer; 1876-1965) who had emigrated to England from Hungary. She had two younger siblings: a sister Doris (1905-1959) and a brother George (1909-1981). The family lived at 80 Canfield Gardens in South Hampstead and the girls attended the nearby South Hampstead High School where 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 Art 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. Doris subsequently performed regularly as a cast member at the Old Vic theatre in the 1927-29 season. Meanwhile, Hedwig established her studio at 29 Abercorn Place, St John’s Wood, painting a range of notable sitters, women in particular, including the young artist and future novelist Barbara Comyns (lot 75).

With many of Pillitz’s sitters being in the arts, it is unsurprising to find that her only painting in a public UK collection is 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, and bequeathed it to the museum in her will. All Hedwig’s paintings in the present sale seem to have been painted from the late 1920s through until the 1950s.

72
HEDWIG PILLTZ (BRITISH-HUNGARIAN 1896-1987)
PORTRAIT OF PADDY GOODMAN VINE
signed PiLLiTZ lower right
oil on canvas
61 x 51cm; 24 x 20in
(unframed)