.jpg?maxwidth=3840)
Lot 47THE PROPERTY OF THE LATE LADY KENNET SOLD BY ORDER OF THE EXECUTORS
(see also lots 174-182)
The dagger and robes of T.E. LAWRENCE (1888-1935): A chance encounter between Kathleen Scott [later Lady Kennet], widow of the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, and T.E. Lawrence at Waterloo station gave the sculptress and society hostess an opportunity to request a sitting from the man she had spied once before at the ballet – ‘you had a turban on and I think I thought you had been born in it’, she would write to him – without having known his identity. Lawrence acquiesced, stipulating only that she did not ‘do me as Colonel Lawrence (he died Nov. 11. 1918)’. In fact, the resulting sculpture depicted him in just this manner, in full Arab dress, dagger at his waist. Of the sitting on 9 February 1921, Scott wrote: ‘Oh, what a very pleasant day, first Col. Lawrence came. We had great fun about dressing him up in his Arabian clothes, which he finally put on in the drawing room’. After his final sitting on the 20 February, he left the present dagger and robes with Kathleen, that she might continue her work while he sailed to Cairo; it would be over a year later, on the 28 August 1922, that he would write to request their return – ‘There’s a little artist wants to do an Arab picture, & has asked me for kit … Do you think you could provide some from your store?’ – later mentioning in a letter to Lionel Curtis in 1929 (see below) that the dagger still remained in the possession of Lady Hilton Young [Scott having married Edward Hilton Young, later 1st Baron Kennet]. No such retrieval was made, and the dagger and the robes have remained in the possession of the family since then. Christie's is grateful for the help of Joseph Berton in the cataloguing of these two lots.
Literature:
Joseph Berton, ‘T. E. Lawrence: His Arab Clothing and Daggers’, The Journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society, vol. XXIV (2014/15), No.1, pp. 39-55.
Alison Jolley, ‘‘An acute attack of Lawrencitis’: Lady Kathleen Scott’s Friendship with the Lawrence family’, ibid., pp. 56-111.
David Garnett (ed.), The Letters of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia (London, 1964).
Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia (London, 1989).
(see also lots 174-182)
The dagger and robes of T.E. LAWRENCE (1888-1935): A chance encounter between Kathleen Scott [later Lady Kennet], widow of the Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, and T.E. Lawrence at Waterloo station gave the sculptress and society hostess an opportunity to request a sitting from the man she had spied once before at the ballet – ‘you had a turban on and I think I thought you had been born in it’, she would write to him – without having known his identity. Lawrence acquiesced, stipulating only that she did not ‘do me as Colonel Lawrence (he died Nov. 11. 1918)’. In fact, the resulting sculpture depicted him in just this manner, in full Arab dress, dagger at his waist. Of the sitting on 9 February 1921, Scott wrote: ‘Oh, what a very pleasant day, first Col. Lawrence came. We had great fun about dressing him up in his Arabian clothes, which he finally put on in the drawing room’. After his final sitting on the 20 February, he left the present dagger and robes with Kathleen, that she might continue her work while he sailed to Cairo; it would be over a year later, on the 28 August 1922, that he would write to request their return – ‘There’s a little artist wants to do an Arab picture, & has asked me for kit … Do you think you could provide some from your store?’ – later mentioning in a letter to Lionel Curtis in 1929 (see below) that the dagger still remained in the possession of Lady Hilton Young [Scott having married Edward Hilton Young, later 1st Baron Kennet]. No such retrieval was made, and the dagger and the robes have remained in the possession of the family since then. Christie's is grateful for the help of Joseph Berton in the cataloguing of these two lots.
Literature:
Joseph Berton, ‘T. E. Lawrence: His Arab Clothing and Daggers’, The Journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society, vol. XXIV (2014/15), No.1, pp. 39-55.
Alison Jolley, ‘‘An acute attack of Lawrencitis’: Lady Kathleen Scott’s Friendship with the Lawrence family’, ibid., pp. 56-111.
David Garnett (ed.), The Letters of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia (London, 1964).
Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia (London, 1989).
SILVER-GILT MOUNTED ARAB JAMBIYA DAGGER. Ornately-tooled hilt and scabbard, curved blade. 30cm long.
Fermé15 July 2015
Prix réalisé
GBP 122,500