Garman sisters

Kitty Garman, the daughter of Kathleen Garman, is the subject of Lucian Freud's Girl with a white dog, 1951–52.

The Garman sisters were members of London's bohemian Bloomsbury set. The complex lives of Mary, Kathleen and Lorna included affairs with writer Vita Sackville-West, composer Ferruccio Busoni, painter Bernard Meninsky, sculptor Jacob Epstein, poet Laurie Lee and painter Lucian Freud^[1]

Biographies

Mary (1898-1979)

Mary Margaret Garman was the eldest of the sisters. Along with her sister Kathleen she ran away to London where they lived in a one room studio at 13 Regent Square in Camden on the outskirts of Bloomsbury. Mary was married to the penniless South African poet Roy Campbell from 1924 until he was killed in a car crash in Portugal in 1957.^[1]

Kathleen (1901-1979)

Kathleen Garman, the third sister, married Sir Jacob Epstein in 1955. She had been his lover since 1925 and mothered three children by him, during which period Epstein's jealous wife Margaret shot and wounded Kathleen and encouraged him into multiple affairs in the hope he would tire of Kathleen and "return home." ^[1] Six years after Margaret's death, Kathleen became Lady Epstein and his sole beneficiary. She donated his works to the Israel Museum, and many can now be seen in the Garman Ryan Collection at the New Art Gallery in Walsall. Her daughter Kitty married Lucian Freud, who was a former lover of Lorna Garman, Kitty's aunt.

Lorna (1911-2000)

Lorna Cecilia Garman married the wealthy publisher Ernest Wishart when she was 16. Throughout the marriage she had affairs, which included the writer Laurie Lee who fathered her third child, and the painter Lucian Freud,^[1] for whom she modelled in many of his paintings, and for whom she brought gifts such as a dead heron and a zebra head. Freud went on to marry her niece, Kitty Epstein (daughter of Kathleen), the subject of Freud's Girl with a White Dog.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans by Cressida Connolly, Fourth Estate

Sources

• The Rare and the Beautiful: The Lives of the Garmans by Cressida Connolly, Fourth Estate
• Family Profile, book review and photographic images of Mary, Lorna and Kathleen

External links

• The Epstein website of the New Art Gallery, Walsall