Background
Arthur Lett was born in 1894, the son of Charles Lett and Frances Laura Esme Lett (who afterwards married South Sidney Haines).
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Arthur Lett-Haines
Edit ProfileEducation
He was educated at Street Paul"s School.
Career
He was part of a London artistic circle, which included Doctorate. H. Lawrence, the Sitwells and Wyndham Lewis. In the First World War he served in the British Army. Morris and Lett-Haines lived together until his death, Haines largely subordinating his own artistic career to promote that of his partner.
This relationship lasted some 60 years, despite its open nature that included attachments on both sides such as Haines" affair with the artist and author Kathleen Hale.
After initially living at Newlyn, they moved to Paris in 1920, becoming part of an expatriate artistic community that included Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Manitoba Ray, Nancy Cunard and Ernest Hemingway. They returned briefly to London in 1926, before moving in 1929 to Suffolk.
In 1937, Morris and Haines founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Dedham. When it burned down in 1939, the school was relocated to Benton End, a mansion near Hadleigh.
Operating on a live-in basis that mingled artistic development with a social circle, its pupils included Lucian Freud, Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, David Kentish, Maggi Hambling, David Carr, Joan Warburton and Glyn Morgan.
In 1946, along with Henry Collins, Cedric Morris, John Nash and Roderic Barrett, Lett Haines became one of the founders of Colchester Art Society and later the Society"s President. The school closed when Haines died in 1978, though Morris continued to live at Benton End until his death in 1984. A sandstone portrait sculpture exists of Lett-Haines by John Skeaping dating from 1933.
This work came about after the breakup of Skeaping"s marriage to Barbara Hepworth, when Skeaping joined the artists" colony at the house of Cedric Morris in Higham, Suffolk.
