William Bruce Ellis Ranken Part II

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William Bruce Ellis Ranken 1902

Well-born and educated at Eton, and eventually Slade, Ranken had an idyllic childhood living in vast estates in both Scotland and England. In 1907 he moved to Chelsea. This put Ranken in the milieu of the Edwardian aesthetes. Gay photographer Baron De Meyer and his wife, Olga, became close friends. He was mentored by gay artist John Singer Sargent.

Adolph de Meyer

Sargent, John SInger (1856-1925) - Self-Portrait 1907 

Of the artist's many patrons and friends, many were gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Some of those included composer Cole Porter; writer Violet Keppel Trefusis, the lover of Vite Sackville-West; Anne Morgan, daughter of the famous financer; decorator Elsie de Wolfe, Morgan's lover; the dynamic literary agent Elizabeth Marbury, also de Wolfe's lover; Henry Davis Sleeper, the collector; life-long companion and friend, actor Ernest Thesiger, who married Ranken's sister Janette at his behest; and most significantly, William Lygon, Earl Beauchamp, and his middle son, the Honorable Hugh Lygon, the model for Sebastian Flyte, the catalyst in Evelyn Waugh's most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited.

Self portrait