Evelyn Victoria Ann Tate (née Chandler) (1887 – 1979)The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed, vol. III, ed. G. E. Cokayne, et al, Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000, p. 301 known by her stage name Eva Carrington, was an

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the Plan_(drawing), plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a mea ...

and sometime peeress as the wife of the

Baron de Clifford Baron de Clifford is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1299 for Robert de Clifford (''c.''1274–1314), feudal baron of Clifford in Herefordshire, feudal baron of Skipton in Yorkshire and feudal baron of Appleby in Westmo ...

Modelling career

Carrington was born Evelyn Chandler in London, the daughter of Anglo-Irish Walter Robert Chandler, a messenger and hall porter at the

Walsingham House The Walsingham House or Walsingham House Hotel was located at 150-4 Piccadilly on the site of what is now The Ritz Hotel, London and was adjacent to the Bath Hotel. The Ritz's financial backers began negotiations in 1901 and purchased the Walsin ...

Hotel,

Piccadilly Piccadilly () is a road in the City of Westminster, London, to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road that connects central London to Hammersmith, Earl's Court, ...

, sometime orderly room clerk to Colonel

Fred Burnaby Colonel Frederick Gustavus Burnaby (3 March 1842 – 17 January 1885) was a British Army intelligence officer. Burnaby's adventurous spirit, pioneering achievements, and swashbuckling courage earned an affection in the minds of Victorian imper ...

. Her mother, Louisa, was a theatre attendant. By 1891, the family were using "Carrington" as their surname. Her sister, Gladys Winifred Carrington Chandler, married

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

Flight Lieutenant Christopher Humphrey Tancred (1888-1972), grandson of Sir Thomas Tancred, 7th Baronet, a philanthropist and early colonist of

Canterbury, New Zealand Canterbury ( mi, Waitaha) is a region of New Zealand, located in the central-eastern South Island. The region covers an area of , making it the largest region in the country by area. It is home to a population of The region in its current f ...

; their son was the actor Anthony Tancred (1930-1995). Carrington was a model for the artist

James Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...

between 1898 and 1902. She posed for a number of Whistler's paintings and drawings, including "A dancing woman in a pink robe, seen from the back", "The Tambourine" "Eva and Gladys Carrington seated on a sofa", and "The Bead Stringers".

Stage career

She became a renowned actress during the

Edwardian The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...

period. A famous role was as one of the

Gibson Girl The Gibson Girl was the personification of the feminine ideal of physical attractiveness as portrayed by the pen-and-ink illustrations of artist Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period that spanned the late 19th and early 20th centuries in th ...

s in the British theatre performance of "

The Catch of the Season ''The Catch of the Season'' is an Edwardian musical comedy by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, with music by Herbert Haines and Evelyn Baker and lyrics by Charles H. Taylor, based on the fairy tale Cinderella. A debutante is engaged to a young ...

Marriages

Eva married Jack Southwell Russell, 25th

, in February 1906. She adopted the title Lady de Clifford. This marriage, of a

commoner A commoner, also known as the ''common man'', ''commoners'', the ''common people'' or the ''masses'', was in earlier use an ordinary person in a community or nation who did not have any significant social status, especially a member of neither ...

and

showgirl A showgirl is a female dancer or performer in a stage entertainment show intended to showcase the performer's physical attributes, typically by way of revealing clothing, toplessness, or nudity. History Showgirls date back to the late 180 ...

to a senior peer, created a scandal at the time. Following her first husband's death, she married Captain Arthur Roy Stock of Glenapp Castle, Ayrshire, in 1913; he died in 1915. In 1922, Eva married George Vernon Tate, grandson of the founder of the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

.The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler, Glasgow University
Whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk; accessed 27 February 2017. She had several children, and the eldest, Edward Southwell Russell, succeeded to the de Clifford barony.

References

External links

New York Times article on the marriage to Baron de Clifford

Biography of Edward Southwell Russell
everything2.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Carrington, Eva 1887 births 1979 deaths English female models English actresses Actresses from London de Clifford Models from London