 Clare Consuelo Sheridan - sculptress, novelist, journalist, traveller. (1885-1970)
Short biographical sketch
Clare Consuelo Sheridan was a renowned sculptress, novelist, newspaper correspondent, career women and traveller, always leading an adventurous and tempestuous life.
Her maiden name was Frewen. She was born in London on September 9, 1885 as daughter of a British nobleman, Moreton Frewen, and his wife Clara Jerome, one of three daughters of an American milllionaire.
One of Clara Jerome’s sisters, and thus Clare Frewen's aunts, was Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, who later became Britain's famous World War II prime minister, so that Clare Frewen was his cousin. Growing up with her two brothers in a wealthy family, she spent her childhood and youth primarily in Inishannon, Ireland, where her father was owner of inherited estates; he was owner of a large London house in Chesham Place and of a 14th century house in Sussex, too. It was said, that Clare Sheridan (Frewen) always considered herself Irish. She was educated in England, Ireland, at the Convent of the Assumption, Paris, and at Darmstadt, Germany.
In 1910 she married stockbroker Wilfred Sheridan from Dorset who was a direct descendent of the famous dramatist Richard Brinsley Sheridan (author e.g. of The school for scandal). They got three children, but the second daughter, Elizabeth, died of meningitis only after a few months of life. Clare Sheridan is said to have taken up sculpting shortly after the death of Elizabeth, discovering her talent as a sculptress when modelling a weeping angel for the Elizabeth's grave.
Since her husband was killed as soldier in France in September 1915, war-widow Clare Sheridan had to support herself, her young daughter Margaret and her son Richard Brinsley. who was born just a few days before his father's death. She moved to London and soon turned professional, i.e. to the execution of portrait busts after having taken lessons from sculptors John Tweed and Prof. Edouard Lanteri.
At the end of the First World War, she had established herself as a distinguished sculptress of excellent portrait busts. Among her sitters were such prominent men and women like Guglielmo Marconi, Lord Asquith, Gladys Cooper, H.G. Wells and of course her cousin Winston Churchill (she again sculpted a bust of her cousin in 1942/43, replica of which can be admired at various places all over England), Mahatma Gandhi (in 1931), Lord Birkenhead, and Marie of Roumania.
When in Summer 1920 a Soviet Russian trade delegation, consisting of L. Krassin, G. Litvinov and others, visited London she got an invitation to Moscow in order to make busts of some of the leading Russian revolutionaries. Although her family was upset – quite understandable taking into consideration Sir Winston Churchill's eminent rôle as an anti-Bolshevik crusader – Clare Sheridan traveled to Moscow in autumn 1920, and among her sitters there were Trotsky, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Dzherzhinskii. In London she had done a head of Krassin, too. [Read more about her Trotsky bust]
One year before her Moscow trip she held her first exhibition at Grosvenor Gallery, London. A series of other exhibitions followed. Her Lenin bronze head was even displayed at the Royal Academy, in 1924. Clare Sheridan was not only a talented sculptress but in 1922 became European correspondent of the American newspaper New York World. Furthermore she became a tireless traveller – often her journeys were accomplished by motor bicycle with sidecar – and an author of many books about these travels and about her adventurous and eventful life.
She made interviews with statesmen and dictators like for example Mussolini, Mustafa Kemal, Primo de Rivera, Stamboulski, Obregón; she lived with Indian tribes in Canada and in the U.S. for several months, she camped with Charlie Chaplin in California, she travelled Turkey, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and so on.
In 1921 a narrative of her trip to Soviet Russia appeared with title Russian portraits, followed by a considerable number of other more or less autobiographical books (see our Selective list below). One of her books, To the four winds, ran as a best seller.
Clare Sheridan maintained several homes, one in Galway (Irish Republic), one in London and one called Brede Place in Sussex; during the 1920s and 1930s she spent altogether 8 years near Biskra, an oasis town in French Algeria, where she returned to once again in 1954.
During World War II she began woodcarving and devoted her art more and more to religious themes (e.g. Archangel Michael, Head of Mary, Madonna and Holy Child). During a journey to Italy shortly after the end of the War, she converted to Catholicizm. In 1960 she took up residence in the guest house lodge of the Franciscan Convent, Hope Castle at Castleblayney.
Clare Sheridan died at 84 on May 31, 1970 and was buried near Brede Place, Sussex.
An obituary in The Times summarized: "She was a woman of varied talents which throughout a long life she developed with uninhibited zest and success" (The Times, June 2, 1970).
Some biographical sketches as well as comprehensive biographies about Clare Sheridan have been published, see our Selective list below. One of the booklength biographies was written by Anita Leslie, a granddaughter of Leonie Jerome, a sister of Clare Sheridan’s mother; the book describes Sheridan’s life intimately and with much understanding and humour.
The flap of the biography [Leslie, Anita: Clare Sheridan, New York, 1977] sums up about Clare Sheridan:
She was also imperious (if often penniless), restless, reckless, and liable to pop up anytime, anywhere and anyone – often trailing ominous whiffs of scandal behind her – infuriating, rude, lovable, brave and vulnerable.
To those who came to know Clare Sheridan she was certain to be regarded, in time, as at least one of the above. And to herself? 'What am I but a human being? A widow struggling to support her children'”.
The 'Bolshevik cousin'
Selective list of writings by Clare Sheridan
- Mrs. Sheridan’s diary, in: The Times (London), 1920 (Nov.22-27) [Diary from her visit to Soviet Russia in Sept./Nov. 1920 where she went for making busts of Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders; publ. in 6 installments]
- Russian portraits. - London, 1921. - 201 pp. [On pp. 126-150 about Trotsky] [New ed.: Cambridge, 1992]
- Mayfair to Moscow : Clare Sheridan's diary. - New York, NY, 1921. - 239 pp. [American ed. of Russian portraits]
- My American diary. - New York, NY, 1922. - XII, 359 pp.
- In many places. - London, 1923. - 281 pp.
- West and East. - New York, NY, 1923. - 268 pp. [American ed. of In many places]
- Across Europe with Satanella. - London, 1925. - 216 pp.
- A Turkish kaleidoscope. - London, 1926
- Nuda veritas. - London, 1927. - 347 pp.
- Ich, meine Kinder und die Grossmächte der Welt : ein Lebensbuch unserer Zeit. - Leipzig, 1928. - 348 pp. [On pp. 171-181 about Trotsky]
- Genetrix. - London, 1935
- Arab interlude. - London, 1936
- Arabisches Zwischenspiel : Erlebnisse und Erinnerungen. - Hamburg, 1937 [German ed. of Arab interlude]
- To the four winds. - London, 1957. - 351 pp.
- Le buste de Léon Trotsky, in: Cahiers Léon Trotsky, 1979 (2), pp. 53-64 [Extracted and transl. from her Russian portraits, London, 1921]
Selective list of writings about Clare Sheridan
- Cole, Margaret: Clare Sheridan, in: Cole, Margaret: Women of to-day. - London, 1946, pp. 235-260 [Reprint of the ed. 1938. Another reprint was publ. New York, 1968]
- Lemaître, Henri: Clare Sheridan : une cousine de Churchill à Assise, in: Convertis du XXe siècle, Paris [etc.], 3, 1959, pp. 23-38
- Leslie, Anita: Cousin Clare : the tempestuous career of Clare Sheridan. - London, 1976. - XI, 271 pp.
- Leslie, Anita: Clare Sheridan. - Garden City, NY, 1977. - XV, 318 pp. [American ed. of Cousin Clare. On cover: Her tempestuous life with Jennie Churchill, Mussolini, Lenin, Charlie Chaplin, Trotsky, Winston Churchill, and others. Containing, among others, the chapters To the Kremlin and Duet with Trotsky (pp. 121-146)]
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Leslie, Anita: Sheridan [née Frewen], Clare Consuelo (1885-1970), sculptor and journalist, in: Oxford dictionary of national biography : from the earliest time to the year 2000 / ed. by H.C.G. Matthew [et al.], vol. 50, Oxford [etc.], 2004, pp. 293-294.
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Snoddy, Theo: Sheridan, Clare (1885-1970), sculptor, in: Snoddy, Theo: Dictionary of Irish artists, 20th century. - Dublin, 1996, pp. 459-461
- Taylor, Betty: Clare Sheridan (1885-1970). - Hastings, 1984. - 33 pp.
- [Anon.]: Mrs Clare Sheridan : sculptor, journalist and traveller, in: The Times, 1970 (June 2=Nr.57885), p. 12. [Obituary]
- [Anon.]: Sheridan, Mrs. Clare Consuelo (Frewen), in: Kunitz, Stanley J. and Howard Haycraft (ed.): Twentieth century authors. - New York, NY, 1944, p. 1276
- [Anon.]: Sheridan, Mrs. Clare Consuelo (Frewen), in: Kunitz, Stanley J. (ed.): Twentieth century authors. 1st suppl. - New York, NY, 1955, p. 904
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