Partner Christopher Wood
José Antonio
"Tony" Gandarillas Huici (July 23, 1885 – 1970) was a Chilean diplomat.
In the early summer of 1921, José Antonio Gandarillas Huici
met painter Christopher Wood. Gandarillas, a married homosexual fourteen
years older than Wood, lived a glamorous life partly financed by gambling.
Their relationship lasted through Wood's life.
He was the son of José Antonio Gandarillas Luco and Rosa Huici Arguedas. He married Juana Edwards Mac-Clure and was the father of Carmen Gandarillas Edwards; Marie Rose Gandarillas Edwards e Juana Carlota Victoria Gandarillas Edwards.
José Antonio Gandarillas was born in Chile into a very wealthy family (his aunt was the famous patron Eugenia Errazuriz). Received at the home of Count Etienne de Beaumont, at Princess Marthe Bibesco, in Marie-Louise Bousquet's salon or at Lady Nancy Cunard in London, this "unrivalled confidant", according to Violet Trefusis, "small, pimping, aware of everything, from London to New York" had made himself indispensable to this cosmopolitan society made up of artists and billionaires eager for entertainment.
Gandarillas was as well known for his devotion to his friends as for his extravagant receptions where alcohol and opium were not left out. As René Crevel wrote: "Tony is a cabbage, a cabbage." The year 1939 saw the publication of a curious book entitled "My Royal Past, by Baroness von Bolop, as told by Cecil Beaton". It was in fact a work of imagination dedicated to a European baroness created from scratch by Beaton. The book was illustrated with many portraits of "the Baroness", alone or in groups, for which the British photographer had solicited his closest friends. This is how Tony Gandarillas, a former diplomat, former lover of the painter Kit Wood, married and father of two great children, played Mrs. von Bolop.
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