Lot 396: STIRLING, WALTER FRANCIS (1880-1958, Lieutenant-Colonel, Chief of Staff to T.E. Lawrence)

PORTRAIT BY JULIET PANNETT (1911-2005), chalk drawing, bust, three-quarter length, profile facing right, signed by Juliet Pannett, framed and glazed, size of image 14 x 10 inches (36 x 25.5 cm), overall size 22 x 17 inches (56 x 43 cm), no date

Lawrence called him Stirling the imperturbable. In T.E. Lawrence by his Friends, 1937, Stirling wrote of his time with Lawrence: 'From then [early 1918] throughout the final phase of the Arab revolt on till the capture of Damascus, I worked, travelled, and fought alongside Lawrence...We sensed that we were serving with a man immeasurably our superior...In my considered opinion, Lawrence was the greatest genius whom England has produced in the last two centuries...If ever a genius, a scholar, an artist, and an imp of Shaitan were rolled into one personality, it was Lawrence.'

Stirling served at the relief of Ladysmith, in the action at Laing's Nek and the operations in the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal in the Boer War. In 1906 he was seconded to the Egyptian Army and spent five years patrolling with an Arab battalion on the Eritrean and Abyssinian borders. In the First World War he served at Gallipoli in Egypt and the Palestinian campaign until he was appointed Chief Officer to Lawrence. In 1919 he was adviser to Emir Feisal and Deputy Political Oddicer in Cairo, then acting governor of Sinai and Governor of the Jaffa district in Palestine. In 1923 he became adviser to King Zog I. He collaborated with Alexander Korda on an unfinished film called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In the Second World War he served in Damascus becoming the correspondent for The Times. He survived an assassination attempt in 1949 despite being riddled with bullets.

There is no portrait of Stirling in the National Portrait Gallery.