Whistler was 19 and a rising star of the art world when he met Olivier, a 51-year-old spinster, in 1925. Together, they embarked on a friendship that would transform their lives. Olivier’s enchanting home, set behind the wall of the Wilton estate in woods that had inspired Sidney’s Arcadia, became a sanctuary for Whistler, Siegfried Sassoon, Cecil Beaton and others. Days were spent sightseeing, painting and conjuring visions of the past. In the months before Rex went to his death in WW II, he returned to Edith’s home. For him it was ‘the enchanting ideal longed-for country’. Author Anna Thomasson will tell the story of that 19-year friendship and the English Arcadia that inspired it.
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