Hedwig Pillitz was born into a Jewish family in Hampstead, England in 1896, training at the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art. She specialised in portraiture, focusing particularly on capturing the likenesses of prominent figures in the performing arts, including distinguished actors, dancers and musicians.
Painter Hedwig Pillitz was born into a Jewish family in Hampstead, England on 18 July 1896. She was the first-born child of Arpad Armin Pillitz (1867-1948) and Josephine Fischer (born in 1876), both of whom migrated from Austria-Hungary to England. The London Gazette records that Arpad Pillitz became a naturalised British citizen in 1914, when Hedwig was 18. The family resided at 80 Canfield Gardens, Hampstead at this time, with Arpad employed as the 'Deputy Manager of a Firm of Merchants'. Earlier in his career, Arpad had partnered with Robert Pender Stein in a corn brokerage, which they dissolved in 1903.
Hedwig Pillitz and her younger sister, Doris, attended South Hampstead High School for Girls in Maresfield Gardens. While there, Hedwig demonstrated a remarkable talent in art, whereas Doris excelled in music and drama. In the 1926 edition of the South Hampstead High School Magazine Jubilee Number, the notable achievements of the sisters were highlighted. Both were recognised as members of the school's Past and Present Club. This publication also documented Hedwig Pillitz's artistic achievements, noting her exhibition of a landscape at the 1926 Paris Salon. Additionally, it mentioned that Pillitz showed both a flower piece and a landscape at the Autumn Exhibition held at Liverpool's Walker Gallery. Following her secondary education, Pillitz trained at the Byam Shaw and Vicat Cole School of Art, in Campden Street, Kensington (Société des Artistes Français 1934). Doris Pillitz demonstrated her acting skills in the 1927–28 season at London's Old Vic theatre, performing in several Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, and King Lear. It is possible that through Doris, Hedwig Pillitz was introduced to 'Yorkie', another actor at the Old Vic, who became the subject of one of her portraits. This painting was created while Hedwig lived at 28 Abercorn Place in St John’s Wood. Pillitz also attracted notable female sitters for her portraits, including Marguerite Kelsey, a professional model in high demand among painters of the era, and Shulamith Shafir, a Russian-born concert pianist who made her English concerto debut in 1936 at just thirteen years old and first appeared at the Royal Albert Hall in 1941. These paintings, along with a collection of other portraits by Pillitz from the 1920s–1950s, were sold at Olympia Auctions in London in October 2023.
A portrait of Elizabeth Addyman, a Shakespearean actress associated with the Old Vic and the Ben Greet Shakespeare Company, was featured in the Bystander on 2 November 1927. The following year, Pillitz exhibited at the New Society of Artists; her works on display at the Society's Suffolk Street Gallery included the landscape Devon Trees and the portraits Elizabeth andMeg, the latter receiving special mention in the Times and Daily News London, respectively. In 1933 she showed with the New English Art Club (NEAC) and subsequently at the London Portrait Society exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries (1938, 1939, 1940). Further afield, Pillitz often contributed to the Paris Salon, including Lillith (1931) and Joanne (1946).
With a more political slant, Pillitz participated in the 1943 exhibition Artists Aid China, organised by the Artists’ International Association (AIA). The AIA was a British and pro-Soviet organisation founded in 1933, which took an early interest in refugees from Nazi-occupied Germany and Austria and supported the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), a left -leaning, politically inspired organisation offering cultural support to anti-Nazi German refugees in Britain throughout the war. Pillitz held a solo exhibition at London's Oxley Gallery in 1935, followed by a show at Cooling Galleries in 1936, presenting portraits, landscapes, and flower pieces. This exhibition notably featured portraits of prominent figures, such as actor Eric Portman in his role as Lord Byron from Catherine Turney's play Bitter Harvest, and Dame Alicia Markova as the heroine of Wendy Toye's ballet Aucassin and Nicolette. These received special recognition when reproduced in The Bystander on April 15, 1936. Additionally, Pillitz captured Markova in her role in Geoffrey Toye's Gothic ballet The Haunted Ballroom in 1934, featured in The Sketch on 10 October 1934. Pillitz exhibited four times at the Royal Academy summer exhibition from 1924–40. Her artistic life from the 1940s onwards remains somewhat obscure, and it seems that her participation in exhibitions dwindled.
Hedwig Pillitz died on 21 March 1987 near Reading, Berkshire, England. The brief announcement of her death in The Times, referring to her only as ‘Dear Aunt and Great Aunt’, suggests she likely did not marry or have children. In the UK public domain Pillitz’s portrait of actress Dorothy Black as Emily Brontë in The Brontës by Alfred Sangster is held in the V&A collection. A close-up portrait of Markova, which may have been a study for a larger portrait, was offered for auction at Fieldings Auctioneers in London in 2016. Pillitz’s portrait of Sir Anthony Dolin (c. 1929) was recently displayed in Notes from The Shore at Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London (2023).
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hedwig Pillitz]
Publications related to [Hedwig Pillitz] in the Ben Uri Library