Guilhermina Suggia

Guilhermina Suggia (June 27 1885 – July 30 1950, full name Guilhermina Augusta Xavier de Medim Suggia Carteado Mena), was a Portuguese cellist. She studied in Leipzig under Julius Klengel. From 1907 to 1913 she lived and worked in Paris with fellow cellist Pau Casals, whom she did not however marry. Starting in 1914, she built a spectacular career based in London and Portugal. She was a frequent visitor to Lindisfarne Castle in northern England, where a cello now rests in the Music Room in commemoration of her time spent there. She gave her last British concert at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949.

Portrait

Probably the most famous image of Madame Suggia is the magnificent oil portrait by the Welsh artist Augustus John. This picture was begun in 1920 but not finished till 1923. Apparently Suggia would play Bach while she sat. The result is a very realistic pose, captured, perhaps, at the moment of completion of one of the Bach Cello Suites, a position which certainly could not have been easily "held" by the musician for any length of time. Her left knee is particularly well and properly placed by the artist.

The portrait was shown at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1924, bought by an American but later returned to England and presented to the Tate Gallery. The painting measures 186 X 165 cm.