National Gallery Of Australia | Audio Tour | George.w.lambert Retrospective

The British writer Helen de Vere Beauclerk (1892–1969) was born Helen Mary Dorothea Bellingham. Her father, a major in the army, died in India a year after her birth, and she was adopted by a close family friend, Major Ferdinand de Vere Beauclerk. She studied at the Paris Conservatoire, and for a short time earned her living teaching music and accompanying on the piano. She returned to England at the outbreak of the First World War. She became a close friend of the artist Edmund Dulac and, after he separated from his wife, lived with him from 1924 until his death in 1953. Dulac frequently used her as a model for his illustrations, and illustrated her two novels, The green lacquer pavilion (1926) and The love of the foolish angel (1929). She also wrote Mountain and the tree (1935) and Shadows on the wall (1941) and translated into English work by Colette. She was tall and slender with a long neck, and dressed simply and elegantly. Lambert captured Helen Beauclerk’s face brilliantly, suggesting the pulsating l