Hedwig Pillitz (1896-1987)

Hedwig Pillitz (British Hungarian 1896-1987) excelled as a portraitist, particularly portraits of those in the performing arts, notably leading actors and musicians that she may well have met through her actor sister Doris . Born in Hampstead Hedwig was the eldest daughter of Arpad Armin Pillitz (1867-1948), and Josephine Fischer (1876) who had emigrated to England from Hungary. Both she and her younger sister Doris attended South Hampstead High School for girls. There Hedwig excelled at art and Doris in music and drama. The sisters’ considerable accomplishments are mentioned in the 1926 South Hampstead High School Magazine Jubilee Number where they are listed as members of the school’s Past and Present Club. Doris was praised for her musical contribution at the Old Girls’ Dinner in July that year, and the ‘Art’ report records that Hedwig had exhibited a landscape in the 1926 ‘Paris Salon’. Elsewhere, under the heading ‘Recent News’ it was noted that Hedwig was showing a flower piece and a landscape at the Autumn Exhibition at the Walker Gallery, Liverpool and that Doris had gained a First Class degree in acting at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art; was the winner of the second year students’ Diction Competition, and had been awarded a prize for verse recital at the 1926 Oxford Recitations. With many of Pillitz’s sitters being artists and performers, it is not surprising perhaps to find that of her few paintings in public collections, the best is also of an actor: Dorothy Black in the role of Emily Brontë in The Brontes (Victoria & Albert Museum). Hedwig painted Black in the lead role in 1933, the year that the play, written by Alfred Sangster, transferred from Sheffield to the Royalty Theatre, London.