Androgynous, eccentric and unapologetically himself, UCL Slade student Stephen Tennant challenged conventions of beauty, gender and identity in 1920s Britain.
In the long echoing corridors and high-ceilinged rooms of the Slade, Stephen spent months vital to his creative youth. Art school epitomized freedom for a young boy – to paint, to draw, to create.
Described as ‘a glittering androgynous figure invested with an almost alien sexuality’, Stephen Tennant (1906–1987) fashioned himself into a living work of art.
He was part of the ‘bright young things’, a group of culture-defining Bohemian aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.
Born into a wealthy family, Stephen grew up in Wilsford Manor, Wiltshire, his mother’s arts and crafts styled country home. In 1922, he entered UCL’s Slade School of Fine Art.
Here, he met the artist, Rex Whistler, who would become his lifelong friend. Rex’s initial impression of Stephen; a “slender figure and extraordinary beauty, like a more delicate Shelley” and it was poetry that established a bond between them. Over sandwiches in the UCL quad, Stephen would recite poetry while Rex would create accompanying illustrations.
He later befriended photographer Cecil Beaton, who photographed him in starkly modern dress. In one now iconic photo, Stephen stands against silver foil wearing a black mackintosh, delicately made-up, with Vaseline on his eyelids to make them shine.
His ‘heart’s best beloved’, as he wrote in letters, was the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, who he met in 1927. Their relationship ended when, after a stay at a psychiatric hospital, Stephen told his doctor that he couldn’t see Sassoon again.
While he wrote poems and sketched vivid illustrations, he was never known for any great works of art or literature – though he obsessively wrote and rewrote his unpublished novel titled Lascar: A Story of the Maritime Boulevards. He often sought advice on writing from friends, such as Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and Willa Cather – yet was content to keep Lascar as a kind of unattainable dream.
Stephen’s eccentricity hid a shy personality. He once said:
I am one of those sad people who would like to be loved without being known – to be a wonderful memory, a legend, a glory.
Artists and writers such as David Hockney, Kenneth Anger, Colin MacInnes and V.S. Naipaul were fascinated by him, as one was another notable Slade alumni - filmmaker Derek Jarman.
Stephen Tennant’s life and ‘legend’ challenged norms around gender, beauty and identity and his story is one that still has influence and relevance today.
Sources and explore further
- Philip Hoare, Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant (1990)
- Philip Hoare , Tennant, Stephen James Napier (1906–1987), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(2011)
- L. J. Summerhaye, Stephen-tennant.org, Lilium’s Compendium.
- Emma Garman, The Great Writer Who Never Wrote, The Paris Review (2020)
