Rex Whistler (24 June 1905 – 18 July 1944) was a British artist whose career was cut short by the Second World War. When he left his tank, a mortar bomb exploded beside him. He painted his friend Novelist Edith Olivier at her home, Day House, a few years before his death.
The 1942 oil on canvas painting shows novelist Edith Oliver on the Wilton Estate, wearing a red cardigan and standing to the right of the picture. The painting is sunny, breezy, atmospheric, and wistful. During the war, while on annual leave, Whistler painted a series depicting Wilton Park and Edith in 1942. Edith and Rex met in 1925 and became fast, firm friends. She was native to Wiltshire, and at the behest of the Wiltshire County agricultural committee, Oliver helped form Wiltshire’s Women’s Land Army in 1916. She also became the first woman councillor and later mayoress.
Daye House became a haven for literary circles like the Bright Young Things, and Whistler’s elegance and wit ensured his success as a portrait artist among the fashionable – including Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant, Siegfried Sassoon, William Walton, and Osbert Sitwell. He produced illustrations for Edith’s books. Therefore, the painting also harks back to happier times before Whistler joined the war effort.
When the war broke out, Whistler was 35 years old and eager to play a part. He was commissioned into the Welsh Guards as a second lieutenant in June 1940 and served in the Guards Armoured Division. His unit was sent to France at the end of June 1944, several weeks after the D-Day landings. He was killed in action in Normandy. As he climbed down from Sherlock’s tank, a mortar bomb exploded beside him, throwing him up into the air and breaking his neck.
Whistler trained at the University College London’s Slade School of Fine Art and painted murals, society portraits, designed theatrical sets, and book illustrations. The military appreciated this, and he continued some of his work, including a self-portrait in uniform held by the National Army Museum.
During the war, he was the burial officer of his regiment, and his soldiers became somewhat suspicious of the 20 crosses he carried on his tank. He decided that just because he was at war, it did not mean he could not paint, and therefore he also carried a bucket handing off the side of his tank for his paintbrushes.
Just days before he was killed, he remarked to a friend that he wanted to be buried where he fell, not in a military cemetery. His body now lies in Banneville-la-Campagne War Cemetery. The Times received more letters about Whistler’s death than any other war victim.
On hearing the news of Rex’s death, Edith was devastated. In her nightly journal she avoided making three entries: when her brother Harold was killed fighting in 1914, her sister Mildred died from breast cancer in 1923, and her closest friend Rex Whistler was killed jumping from his tank in 1944. She spent her final years planning a book about Rex, which was never completed. She wrote one final book about her beloved Wiltshire, which was published posthumously. Edith died at home in the Daye House on 10 May 1948.
The Salisbury Museum has five oil paintings on display by Whistler and also holds his archive, which was acquired in 2013 with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, V&A Purchase Grant Fund and Friends of the National Libraries.
The Rex Whistler Archive is beloved by volunteers, many of whom have worked hard to assist the museum in cataloguing it. His skill as an artist, his poignant story, and his links to Wiltshire’s history make the archive very valuable.
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