Arthur Lett-Haines
British artist (1894-1978)
Arthur Lett-Haines (2 November 1894 – 25 February 1978), known as Lett Haines, was a British painter and sculptor who experimented in many different media, though he generally characterised himself as "an English surrealist". He was part of a London artistic circle, which included D. H. Lawrence, the Sitwells and Wyndham Lewis, but for most of his life lived with the painter and gardener Cedric Morris in Cornwall, Paris and finally Suffolk.
Biography
Arthur Lett was born 2 November 1894, at 9 Walterton Road, Paddington, London, the son of Charles Lett and Frances Laura Esme Lett (who afterwards married S. Sidney Haines). He was educated at St Paul's School, London and then, planning a career in agriculture, he worked on a farm at Poslingford Hall in Clare, Suffolk.
In the First World War he served in the British Army. In 1916 Lett-Haines married (as his second wife; he had been left a widower whilst still a teenager) Michigan-born Gertrude Aimee Lincoln. at Hailsham, but when he met the painter Cedric Morris in 1918, the latter moved in with them and in 1919 his wife Aimee returned on her own to America. Morris and Lett-Haines lived together until his death, Haines largely subordinating his own artistic career to promote that of his partner. This relationship lasted some 60 years, despite its open nature that included attachments on both sides such as Haines' affair with the artist and author Kathleen Hale.
After initially living at Newlyn, they moved to Paris in 1920, becoming part of an expatriate artistic community that included Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Nancy Cunard and Ernest Hemingway.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4799500. VIAF identifies the subject as 55199673. The Library of Congress control number is nb2003107275. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1894, 1978, 1916 and 1918.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arthur Lett-Haines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.