EPSTEIN'S MODEL

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 25, 31 January 1933, Page 11

EPSTEIN'S MODEL

SUNITA DEVI'S DEATH

Sunita Dcvi, most' famous of Epstein's models, has died suddenly in India (states a London writer). Queer circumstances surrounded her death. When she died not a whisper of this knowledge was allowed to reach. \ the woijld for several weeks. The first intimation . was received •by her sisterAnita, from their father in Bombay. Immediately Anita left England for India. Sunita died and was buried under another name—her real one—which is Mrs. Armina Peerbhoy. None of her intimate friends in Bombay associated Mrs. Peerbhoy with the model and mystic who moved through Europe as "Princess Sunita," and was one of London's most envied beauties. Friends of the-dead woman in London are recalling that she dreaded her return to India. They' remember a strange prophecy she made before leaving. "I am going to my death," she said. "When pressed for a reason she would not explain. "It is so, I know," was all that she would add. Sunita's home was in Bombay. Her last journey was just after the Bound Table Conference, with certain members of which she was closely connected. She first made her appearance in England at the time of the Empire] Exhibition at 'Wembley, with her sister Anita, and her small son Envcr. GIFT OF OCCULT. Sunita and her sister opened a stall in the Indian Palace of the exhibition, where they exhibited for sale . ivory carvings, Benares brasswork, and Oriental jewellery. They became a centre of interest. Many artists of note pressed them to pose, but they refused. At last Sunita and her sister agreed to pose for Jacob Epstein. Sunita always refused to pose for anyone else.. Many galleries and private collections thoughout Europe and America possess a recordof Sunita's beauty, wrought in bronze or stone or by pencil and brush from the hand of Epstein. There is the bronze head and shoulders of Sunita at the Tate Gallery, and a group, "The Madonna and Child," sculptured from Sunita and her boy Enver. Nearly three-quarters of the pictures and drawings of Epstein that were exhibited fairly recently at the Knoodle Galleries showed either Sunita or 'Anita as a model. . ■ ■ : Sunita's other gift was occult. She could analyse character at. a. glance; she told fortunes with startling accuracy, and, as in predicting her own death, she seemed able at times to make forecasts which were astonishingly fulfilled. Often Sunita pledged her jewels for her friends, but with one thing she would.never part.'That was the curious gold snaky chain about her neck. It was her guard, sho said, against evil. If ever she lost it, she was doomed.