Lot 133: SASSOON, SIEGFRIED LORAINE (1886-1967, poet and novelist)

PORTRAIT BY GEORGE CHARLES BERESFORD (1864-1939),
photograph, platinum print, half-length, turned to the camera, wearing military uniform with the collar badges of the Royal Welch Fusiliers and hat, tipped onto the original brown mount, Beresford's stamp and copyright line on verso, 6 x 4½ in (15.2 x 11.5 cm).

'Where did you get that hat?' Sassoon wrote on his own example of this photograph, dated May 1915 by him, that was slipped into his copy of The Best of Both Worlds and which remained in the library at Heytesbury House after his death. Another photograph by Beresford taken on the same occasion is illustrated in Paul Moeyes, Siegfried Sassoon: Scorched Glory, 1997 (Hulton Getty Picture Collection). The present photograph was loaned to Jean Moorcroft Wilson and is reproduced as Plate 1 in the first volume of her biography of Sassoon (1998).

Beresford worked as a portrait photographer from 1902-1932 in Yeoman's Row, Knightsbridge, specialising in platinotype portraits of authors, artists and politicians. He was the model for 'M Turk' in Kipling's Stalky & Co. The 175 examples of his work in the National Portrait Gallery do not include this portrait of May 1915.

Sassoon wrote: 'I am always delighted to be delineated, painted, sketched or caricatured; even being photographed or "snap-shotted" gives me a delicious satisfaction - far better than being reviewed in the Literary Supplement.'