Mary Hutchinson

Mary Barnes Hutchinson (29 March 1889 – 17 April 1977) was a British short-story writer, socialite, model and a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Early life Hutchinson was born in Simla, Bengal, British India, to Sir Hugh Barnes and Winifred (Strachey) Barnes. After spending her early childhood in India, she was raised in Florence, Italy by her maternal grandparents, and later attended boarding school in England. Hutchinson moved to London in 1909 and in 1910 married barrister St John Hutchinson. Their marriage lasted until his death in 1942. They had two children, Jeremy Hutchinson, Baron Hutchinson of Lullington and Barbara Judith, who later married Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild.

Bloomsbury Group In 1910, her cousin Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant introduced her to the Bloomsbury Group. Throughout her life, she attracted a group of writers and painters to her house, where she and her husband entertained, among others, Mark Gertler, Edward Kauffer, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and Virginia Woolf. Hermione Lee asserts in her biography of Virginia Woolf that Hutchinson was the "main inspiration for the febrile socialite Jinny in The Waves."

Art model Hutchinson often posed as a model for painters. In 1915, Vanessa Bell painted an unflattering portrait of her called Mrs. St. John Hutchinson, describing it as "perfectly hideous... and yet quite recognizable."

Hutchinson also posed for two of Bell's paintings, Nude with Poppies (1916), which Bell painted for Hutchinson, and The Tub.

Hutchinson was also the subject of a 4th painting in 1920 where she is shown in an attractive pose. This would have been painted some six years into Hutchinson’s public affair with Clive Bell in sharp contrast with the 1915 “hideous” portrait. [Citation and illustration: VWSGB Bulletin No. 66, January 2021]

Clive Bell introduced her to Henri Matisse, who drew her portrait twice in 1936, both charcoal drawings entitled Portrait of Mary Hutchinson.

Hutchinson and T.S. Eliot maintained a close correspondence from 1916 until the last months of his life.