BEAUTY LAID TO REST

Northern Advocate, 23 March 1936, Page 8

BEAUTY LAID TO REST

ARTISTS MOURN FAMOUS MODEL Beauty was laid to rest in Brompton Cemetery, England, recently. A marchioness in a sable coat and a milk roundsman with a leather satchel on his back stood by a grave in the misty sunshine. Such was the tribute to the passing of 23-years-old Rhoda Madge Beasley, the artists’ model of Chelsea, whose loveliness lives on in painting and sculpture and photographs, writes Paul Bewsher in the “Daily Mail.”

Rich and poor were sharing a common grief—artists who had been inspired by the beauty of her face, humble people who had been inspired by the beauty of her character. Countless thousands of people have been uplifted by the sight of her steady eyes and quiet dignity shining from portraits in the Royal Academy and at other famous art galleries. Completely Unspoilt.

Many celebrated artists—including distinguished amateurs—had called upon her to sit for them. Wealthy men had asked her to marry them. Completely unspoilt, she lived happily in her simple home near World’s End Passage in Chelsea, with her father, a porter at a London ship, and mother, to both of whom she was devoted. The children adored their “Auntie Tiny,” as they called her.

Her death was as great a tragedy for the townspeople of Chelsea—which is like a village in the heart of London —as for the artists who had immortalised her.

So it was that, many poor men and women, some carrying babies, made their way through the mist-wreathed trees and old tombstones of this Victorian cemetery when she was carried to her resting place.

With them walked Mr Gerald Reitlinger, the archaeologist and artist, Mr John Hay, whose portrait of Rhoda in the Royal Academy of 1932 was one of the outstanding pictures of the year, and made all London talk about her beauty; and the Marchioness of Queensberry, her lovely face blurred with grief. Lady Queensberry, who is as well known by her former name of Cathleen Mann, is a celebrated portrait painter, and Rhoda Beasley had been her model for ten years. So much did she admire her model’s character that she came to regard her as a close friend, and when Rhoda was taken seriously ill she visited her ,in hospital day after day.

“Still Beautiful.” Lady Queensberry was at her bedside only half an hour before she died. Mrs Beasley had been with her, but the nurses persuaded her to go as they knew their patient was dying. Some weeks ago Lady Queensberry gave Rhoda a bed-jacket of quilted pink satin trimmed with blue swansdown. The girl said that she would keep it till_she got better. It was in this jacket, which she had never worn in life, that she was buried. As she lay in her house on the night before the funeral, with lilies-of-the-valley in her slender hands, a string of pearls about her neck, and a quaint smile on her pale face, there was a knock on the door.

It was Captain Bryan French, who was one of the first to appreciate the girl’s beauty and painted her when she was only 15. He went to Paris shortly afterwards and had never seen her again. Returning to London for Christmas he had heard that she was dead.

For a long moment the artist looked down on the face of the dead girl. “She is still beautiful,” he said.