Iris Tree

Who was Iris Tree?

Iris Tree was an English poet, actress and artists' model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress.

Her parents were actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Helen Maud Tree, and her sisters were actresses Felicity and Viola Tree. An aunt was author Constance Beerbohm, and her uncles were explorer and author Julius Beerbohm and caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm.

Iris Tree was sought after, as a young woman, as an artists' model, being painted by Augustus John, simultaneously by Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry, and sculpted by Jacob Epstein, showing her bobbed hair that, along with other behaviour, caused much scandal. The sculpture is currently displayed at the Tate Britain. She was photographed countless times by Man Ray, and ran with Nancy Cunard for a time, in a set at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant of Rudolph Stulik; and acted alongside Diana Cooper in the mid-1920s.

She had studied at the Slade School of Art. She contributed verse to the 1917 Sitwell anthology Wheels; her published collections were Poems and The Traveller and other Poems.