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Kate Lechmere
Kate Elizabeth Lechmere (13 October 1887 – February 1976) was a British painter who with Wyndham Lewis was the co-founder of the Rebel Art Centre in 1914. As far as is known, none of Lechmere's paintings have survived. She served as a nurse in England during the First World War and had a three-year relationship with the poet and critic T. E. Hulme before he was killed. After the war she became a successful milliner.
Lechmere was born in Fownhope, Herefordshire. Her father was Arthur Lechmere, a farmer, and her mother was Alice Lechmere. Kate had two brothers, Arthur and Herbert. The family lived at Bowens, Highland Place, Fownhope, at the time of the 1891 British census and were wealthy enough to employ a nurse and a cook who both lived in. Kate Lechmere was educated at Clifton College. She studied at the Atelier La Palette, Paris, and later under Walter Sickert at the Westminster School of Art. She was close to Lawrence Atkinson with whom she had studied the piano in Normandy.
Lechmere wrote that she first met Wyndham Lewis in 1912, though according to Paul O'Keeffe it was late 1910 or early 1911. They went to dinner during which Lewis barely spoke, which was not unusual, Rebecca West had the same treatment. Afterwards, Lewis revealed that he had received troubling news. His lover Olive Johnson (19 or 20 years old) had become pregnant by him. By December 1912, Lewis and Lechmere were romantically involved and he wrote to her "I have as many kisses as the envelope will hold. The rest I keep in my mouth for you." He called her "Jacques" because she was reading Jean Jacques Rousseau when they met and she called him "Golliwog" because of his long black hair.
One of the things that Lewis liked about Lechmere was her smile and her laugh, smiles being notably missing from most of Lewis's works in the early 1910s. Lechmere was the model for his Smiling Woman Ascending a Stair and The Laughing Woman, both 1912. In a 1914 interview he commented on the slightly grotesque face of the former, "Although the forms of the figure and head perhaps look rather unlikely to you, they are more or less accurate, as representation. It was done from life".
About January 1914, Lechmere wrote to Wyndham Lewis from France suggesting that they set up a "modern art Studio in London, run on much the same lines as those in Paris". After Lewis and Roger Fry fell out in 1914, Lewis with Lechmere and her money founded the Rebel Art Centre at 38 Great Ormond Street in opposition to Fry's Omega Workshops. Lechmere paid the first three months' rent for the centre, paid to have the interior walls moved in order to create the right sized spaces for studios, and even bought a new suit for Lewis. She lived in a small flat at the top of the building.
Lechmere also lent Lewis £100 to produce the first edition of BLAST. Lewis suggested that she take 50 copies to sell but they had to be returned to the publishers when none sold. She was asked by Lewis to complete a drawing for the first edition of BLAST but due to the difficult atmosphere at the time she could not do so. As compensation she was "blessed" in its pages. She did not sign the Vorticist manifesto.
The Centre attracted plenty of press attention, including a visit from the Evening Standard for which Lechmere posed pretending to finish one of her paintings. When the story appeared it ran with the caption "Artists a disappointment in real life". In fact, she did very little painting at this time as she found the Vorticist aesthetic too abstract and lacking a human dimension.
Lechmere met the imposing critic and poet T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) when Lewis brought him to the Rebel Art Centre. Some accounts suggest that Lewis had timed the visit to ensure that Lechmere was out and would not meet Hulme, but she returned unexpectedly early from lunch. In a description that could have been of Lewis, Jacob Epstein, who was otherwise full of praise for Hulme, described him as "large and somewhat abrupt in manner. He had the reputation of being a bully and arrogant because of this abruptness." Hulme "excluded women for the most part from his evenings, as he said the sex element interfered with intellectual talk – a confession of his own weakness."
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Kate Lechmere
Kate Elizabeth Lechmere (13 October 1887 – February 1976) was a British painter who with Wyndham Lewis was the co-founder of the Rebel Art Centre in 1914. As far as is known, none of Lechmere's paintings have survived. She served as a nurse in England during the First World War and had a three-year relationship with the poet and critic T. E. Hulme before he was killed. After the war she became a successful milliner.
Lechmere was born in Fownhope, Herefordshire. Her father was Arthur Lechmere, a farmer, and her mother was Alice Lechmere. Kate had two brothers, Arthur and Herbert. The family lived at Bowens, Highland Place, Fownhope, at the time of the 1891 British census and were wealthy enough to employ a nurse and a cook who both lived in. Kate Lechmere was educated at Clifton College. She studied at the Atelier La Palette, Paris, and later under Walter Sickert at the Westminster School of Art. She was close to Lawrence Atkinson with whom she had studied the piano in Normandy.
Lechmere wrote that she first met Wyndham Lewis in 1912, though according to Paul O'Keeffe it was late 1910 or early 1911. They went to dinner during which Lewis barely spoke, which was not unusual, Rebecca West had the same treatment. Afterwards, Lewis revealed that he had received troubling news. His lover Olive Johnson (19 or 20 years old) had become pregnant by him. By December 1912, Lewis and Lechmere were romantically involved and he wrote to her "I have as many kisses as the envelope will hold. The rest I keep in my mouth for you." He called her "Jacques" because she was reading Jean Jacques Rousseau when they met and she called him "Golliwog" because of his long black hair.
One of the things that Lewis liked about Lechmere was her smile and her laugh, smiles being notably missing from most of Lewis's works in the early 1910s. Lechmere was the model for his Smiling Woman Ascending a Stair and The Laughing Woman, both 1912. In a 1914 interview he commented on the slightly grotesque face of the former, "Although the forms of the figure and head perhaps look rather unlikely to you, they are more or less accurate, as representation. It was done from life".
About January 1914, Lechmere wrote to Wyndham Lewis from France suggesting that they set up a "modern art Studio in London, run on much the same lines as those in Paris". After Lewis and Roger Fry fell out in 1914, Lewis with Lechmere and her money founded the Rebel Art Centre at 38 Great Ormond Street in opposition to Fry's Omega Workshops. Lechmere paid the first three months' rent for the centre, paid to have the interior walls moved in order to create the right sized spaces for studios, and even bought a new suit for Lewis. She lived in a small flat at the top of the building.
Lechmere also lent Lewis £100 to produce the first edition of BLAST. Lewis suggested that she take 50 copies to sell but they had to be returned to the publishers when none sold. She was asked by Lewis to complete a drawing for the first edition of BLAST but due to the difficult atmosphere at the time she could not do so. As compensation she was "blessed" in its pages. She did not sign the Vorticist manifesto.
The Centre attracted plenty of press attention, including a visit from the Evening Standard for which Lechmere posed pretending to finish one of her paintings. When the story appeared it ran with the caption "Artists a disappointment in real life". In fact, she did very little painting at this time as she found the Vorticist aesthetic too abstract and lacking a human dimension.
Lechmere met the imposing critic and poet T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) when Lewis brought him to the Rebel Art Centre. Some accounts suggest that Lewis had timed the visit to ensure that Lechmere was out and would not meet Hulme, but she returned unexpectedly early from lunch. In a description that could have been of Lewis, Jacob Epstein, who was otherwise full of praise for Hulme, described him as "large and somewhat abrupt in manner. He had the reputation of being a bully and arrogant because of this abruptness." Hulme "excluded women for the most part from his evenings, as he said the sex element interfered with intellectual talk – a confession of his own weakness."