BURIED TOGETHER
Partner Cedric Morris, buried together
Queer Places:
9 Walterton Rd, London W9 3PE, Regno Unito
2 Carlyle Square, Chelsea, London SW3 6EX, UK
The Bowgie, Trewerry Mill, St Newlyn East, Newquay TR8 5GS, UK
39 Rue Liancourt, 75014 Paris, France
32 Great Ormond St, London WC1N, Regno Unito
The Pound, Hadleigh Rd, Colchester CO7, Regno Unito
Benton End House, Benton St, Hadleigh, Ipswich IP7 5AR, Regno Unito
Hadleigh cemetery, Hadleigh, Ipswich IP7, Regno Unito
Arthur Lett-Haines (November 2, 1894 – 25 February 1978[1]),
known as Lett Haines, was a British painter and sculptor who
experimented in many different media, though he generally characterised
himself as "an English
surrealist".[2]
He was part of a London artistic circle, which included
D.H. Lawrence, the
Sitwells (Edith Sitwell and
Osbert Sitwell) and
Wyndham Lewis. Cedric Morris and his partner, Arthur Lett-Haines, were good friends with Lady
Duff Twysden, who served as the model for Lady Brett Ashley in
Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1927). In the novel, Lady Ashley is accompanied by a group of young men, among whom are the tall, dark one, named Lett, as well as the wavy blond one, who is both unworthy and inconsequential to be given a name (a clear allusion to Morris’ distinctive golden curls). Ashley’s male companions were offensive precisely because of their homosexuality, especially to the story’s protagonist, Jake Barnes, whose own gendered and sexual identity was questionable at best. In another report, Lett is the guide to the underworld, initiating the reporter into the sultry and seedy nightclubs he and his set frequented; a portrayal not dissimilar to the one provided by Hemingway.
Arthur Lett was born in 1894, at 9 Walterton Road,
Paddington, London, the son of Charles Lett and Frances Laura Esme (who afterwards married S. Sidney Haines). He was educated at
St Paul's School, London.[3]
In the
First World War he served in the
British Army.[3] In 1916 Lett-Haines married Gertrude Aimee Lincoln
(randdaughter of Abraham Lincoln) at
Hailsham,
but when he met the painter
Cedric Morris in 1918, the latter moved in with them and in 1919 his wife
Aimee left on her own for America.[4]
Morris and Lett-Haines lived together until his death, Haines largely
subordinating his own artistic career to promote that of his partner. This
relationship lasted some 60 years, despite its open nature that included
attachments on both sides such as Haines' affair with the artist and author
Kathleen Hale.[5]
After initially living at
Newlyn, they
moved to Paris in 1920, becoming part of an expatriate artistic community that
included
Juan Gris,
Fernand Léger,
Marcel Duchamp,
Man Ray,
Nancy Cunard and
Ernest Hemingway. They returned briefly to London in 1926, before moving
in 1929 to
Suffolk.
In 1937, Morris and Haines founded the
East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at
Dedham. When it burned down in 1939, the school was relocated to Benton
End, a large house near
Hadleigh. Operating on a live-in basis that mingled artistic development
with a social circle, its pupils included
Lucian Freud,
Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, David Kentish,
Maggi Hambling,
David Carr,
Joan Warburton and
Glyn Morgan. He exhibited at the Ipswich Art Club in 1942 Parmi Les
Fleurs.[3]
In 1946, along with
Henry Collins,
Cedric Morris,
John Nash and
Roderic Barrett, Lett Haines became one of the founders of
Colchester Art Society and later the Society's President.[6]
The school closed when Haines died in 1978, though Morris continued to live
at Benton End until his death in 1984. They are buried near each other at
Hadleigh Cemetery in Hadleigh.
A retrospective exhibition was held at Redfern Gallery in 1984 and a joint
Morris-Haines "Teaching Art and Life" exhibition at the
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery in 2002–2003.[3]
A sandstone portrait sculpture[7]
exists of Lett-Haines by
John Skeaping dating from 1933. This work came about after the break-up of
Skeaping's marriage to
Barbara Hepworth, when Skeaping joined the artists' colony at Morris's
house at
Higham, Suffolk. A portrait of Lett-Haines by New Zealander artist Frances
Hodgkins is held at Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand.[8]
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Lett-Haines
- Bachelors of a Different Sort, Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture
and the Modern Interior in Britain, by John Potvin