User:Autodidackt/Lorna Garman

Lorna Wishart, nee Lorna Garman,(1916-2000) was the youngest Garman sisters, the seven daughters (and two sons) of Walter and Margaret Garman, an eccentric Victorian doctor, lead notoriously high profile lives within mid 20th century artistic circles. Having grown up in the bleak surroundings of the ‘Black Country’ at Oakeswell Hall, Wednesbury, in England they were prominent in London's Bohemian Bloomsbury set, between the two world wars. The complex lives of the dazzling beauties Mary, Kathleen and Lorna included affairs with writer Vita Sackville-West; composer Ferruccio Busoni, painter Bernard Meninsky, sculptor Jacob Epstein; poet Laurie Lee and the painter Lucian Freud.

Lorna Garman, the youngest child, was perhaps the most flamboyant and fatale. Exotic clothes, Chanel No5, horse riding at night, a chocolate-brown Bentley, and swimming naked in lakes, rivers and rough seas. At 14 she seduced Ernest Wishart, who became her husband when she was 16. Throughout the marriage she had affairs which included the writer Laurie Lee, who fathered her third child; the painter Lucian Freud for whom she modelled in many of his paintings, and for whom she brought objects such as a dead heron and a zebra head. She was renowned as the heartbreaker of her long-suffering husband and anguished lovers alike.

Remarkably, Lee and Freud each went on to marry Lorna's nieces, Kathy the daughter of Helen Polge, and Kitty the daughter of Lady Kathleen Epstein.

Lorna’s quixotic character is perhaps crystallised by her comment to Laurie Lee when he announced his intention to fight in the Spanish Civil War, “…you don’t need a war because you’ve got one here.”