AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Lord Winterton

Illustration © The Estate of John David Roberts. Reproduced with the permission of the William Roberts Society. Catalogue information based on the catalogue raisonné by David Cleall. For this and full details of the exhibitions cited, see the links below. Any auction prices quoted may not include all fees and taxes, such as VAT and Artist's Resale Right charges.
Images scanned from the Sedgwick copy of the 1926 Seven Pillars of Wisdom are used by courtesy of Mrs J. Sedgwick and are not to be further reproduced except by permission.

Lord Winterton, 1923
Pencil

Commissioned by T. E. Lawrence for Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Edward Turnour (1883–1962) was born in London and educated at Eton and at New College, Oxford, where he was still an undergraduate (reading law) when in Nov. 1904 he became Conservative MP for Horsham, Sussex, in a by-election. In 1907 he succeeded his father as 6th Earl Winterton, remaining as an MP (until 1951) as his title was an Irish one. In the First World War he served with the Sussex Yeomanry in Gallipoli, with the Imperial Camel Corps in Egypt, and eventually with T. E. Lawrence in the Hejaz; he was twice mentioned in dispatches. He was later parliamentary under-secretary for India, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, deputy to the Secretary of State for Air and Paymaster General. Six foot four tall, he continued to favour the high-buttoned jacket and narrow trousers of his youth. It took T. E. Lawrence several months to persuade Winterton to sit for a portrait. Eventually, in Feb. 1923, Lawrence wrote to Roberts, 'It's V. G. to hear Winterton has yielded up his fort . . . and I hope that the taking-over proceedings will not be as fearful as you expect. He's hot, is Winterton: and he'll be an impatient and unconscionable sitter.'