Brenda Pye - Early Life

Early Life

She was born on 29 November 1907, and died in London at the age of 97 on 26 April 2005.

She was the youngest child of a barrister called Walter Capron who was himself the youngest son of a landed gentry family seated at Southwick Hall in Northamptonshire. Her mother’s maiden name was Whistler, and through her she was a distant cousin of the English artist Rex Whistler and his brother the glass engraver Sir Laurence Whistler; she was also more distantly related to the Anglo-American artist James McNeill Whistler.

Her earliest years were spent at her birthplace: Shortwood House, Litton, in Somerset, to which her father had retired from his London practice. A three-quarter length portrait of her in the gardens of Shortwood House in the summer of 1914, was painted by Henry Strachey, at that time the art critic of the Spectator, who lived nearby. However, from 1916 until her death, she lived in London and Sussex.