
Iris Tree (27 January 1897 – 13 April 1968) was an English poet, actress, and
art model,
described as a
bohemian
Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to:
*Anything of or relating to Bohemia
Culture and arts
* Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, originally practised by 19th–20th century European and American artists and writers.
* Bohemian style, a ...
, an
eccentric, a
wit, and an adventurer.
Biography

Iris Tree's parents were actors Sir
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (17 December 1852 – 2 July 1917) was an English actor and Actor-manager, theatre manager.
Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre in the West End theatre, West End, winning ...
and
Helen Maud, Lady Tree. Her sisters were actresses
Felicity and
Viola Tree
Viola Tree (17 July 1884 – 15 November 1938) was an English actress, singer, playwright and author. Daughter of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree, she made many of her early appearances with his company at Her Majesty's Theatre, His Majesty's Th ...
. An aunt was author
Constance Beerbohm, and her uncles were explorer and author
Julius Beerbohm
Julius Beerbohm (26 September 1854 – 21 April 1906) was a Victorian era, Victorian Travel literature, travel-writer, engineer and explorer.
He was the son of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1811–1892), and
caricaturist
A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures.
List of caricaturists
* Abed Abdi (born 1942)
* Abril Lamarque (1904–1999)
* Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003)
* Alex Gard (1900–1948)
* Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977)
* Alfre ...
and
parodist Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, Parody, parodist and Caricature, caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the theatre crit ...
.
[
Iris was sought after as an art model while a young woman, being painted by ]Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...
, simultaneously by Duncan Grant
Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a Scottish painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets, and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group.
His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major ...
, Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen).
Early life and education
Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...
, and Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and art critic, critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent ...
, and sculpted by Jacob Epstein
Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American and British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910.
Early in his ...
, showing her bobbed hair
A bob cut, also known as a bob, is a short to medium length haircut, in which the hair is typically cut straight around the head at approximately jaw level, and no longer than shoulder-length, often with a fringe at the front. The standard bob c ...
(she was said to have cut off the rest and left it on a train) that, along with other behaviour, caused much scandal. The Epstein sculpture is displayed at the Tate
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 UK ...
Britain. She was often photographed by Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...
, was friends with Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the ...
for a time, and acted alongside Diana Cooper in the mid-1920s.
Iris studied at the Slade School of Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
. She contributed verse to the 1917 Sitwell anthology
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and g ...
''Wheels''; her published collections were ''Poems'' (1919), ''The Traveller and other Poems'' (1927), and ''The Marsh Picnic'' (1966).
Iris married twice. Her first marriage was to Curtis Moffat, a New York artist; Ivan Moffat, the screenwriter
A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...
, was their son. She came to America to act in Karl Vollmöller
Karl Gustav Vollmöller (or Vollmoeller; 7 May 1878 – 18 October 1948) was a German philologist, archaeologist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and aircraft designer. He is most famous for the elaborate religious spectacle-pantomime '' The Mir ...
's play ''The Miracle'' in 1925, and there met her second husband, the actor and ex-officer of the Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
n cavalry, Count Friedrich von Ledebur. The two roamed around California with their son before moving back to Europe, where they were involved in the Chekhov Theatre Studio. After their divorce, they both appeared in the 1956 film version of ''Moby Dick
''Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'' is an 1851 Epic (genre), epic novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is centered on the sailor Ishmael (Moby-Dick), Ishmael's narrative of the maniacal quest of Captain Ahab, Ahab, captain of the whaler ...
''. She also appeared as a poet, essentially as herself, in Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini (; 20 January 1920 – 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. He is known for his distinctive style, which blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. He is recognized as one of the greatest and ...
's ''La Dolce Vita
''La Dolce Vita'' (; Italian for 'the sweet life' or 'the good life'Kezich, 203) is a 1960 satirical comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini and written by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, and Brunello Rondi. The film stars M ...
'' (1960).
See also
* Beerbohm family
References
Further reading
* Daphne Fielding (1974). ''The Rainbow Picnic: A Portrait of Iris Tree'', London: Eyre Methuen
* Sarah Parker (2022)
Gaudy Havoc: Iris Tree’s performative decadent modernism
, ''Feminist Modernist Studies'', 5:2, pp. 181–209
External links
*
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tree, Iris
1897 births
1968 deaths
Beerbohm family
English artists' models
English women poets
English people of Lithuanian descent
English people of German descent
20th-century English poets
20th-century English women writers