Existing comment:
Lt. Edward Wyndham Tennant 1897–1916
While still in his teens, Edward Wyndham Tennant developed a promising reputation as a poet. His precocious literary skills reflected the influence of his parents' intellectual social circle, the Souls. At the outbreak of World War I, seventeen-year-old Tennant was quick to offer his service, writing, "I have the feeling of immortality very strongly. I think of death with a light heart and as a friend whom there is no need to fear."
Sargent portrayed Tennant in uniform in 1915, the year after the young man joined the Grenadier Guards. By the end of September 1916, Tennant would be dead, killed by sniper fire during the Battle of the Somme. Tennant's death at the age of nineteen epitomized the loss of a generation of young British aristocrats who had been groomed from childhood to become future leaders of their country. His mother published this drawing in her 1919 memoir of Tennant.
Charcoal on paper, 1915
Collection of the Tennant Family
This is the National Portrait Gallery sign in the exhibit. |