Brian Sewell

Brian Sewell

Brian Sewell (1931–2015), was an art critic, writing for the London Evening Standard. He has been described as "Britain's most famous and controversial art critic".

The illegitimate son of the composer Peter Warlock, who died seven months before he was born, Sewell was brought up in Kensington, London, and was educated at the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hampstead. Offered a place to read history at Oxford, Sewell chose instead to enter the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, where he was tutored by Anthony Blunt and became his close friend. Sewell graduated in 1957 and worked at Christie's auction house, specialising in Old Master paintings and drawings. After leaving Christie's he became an art dealer. He completed his National Service as an officer in the Royal Army Service Corps.

In 1970 Sewell became chairman of CHE's London Group 3.

In 1979, after Blunt's exposure as the fourth man in the Cambridge spy ring, Sewell assisted in sheltering him in Chiswick from media attention. He continued to defend his former tutor.

In a television programme broadcast on Channel 4 on 24 July 2007, marking the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 which partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales, Sewell said, "I never came out... but I have slowly emerged". Sewell has been described as bisexual but has also described himself as gay, saying he knew he was probably at the age of six. He has chastised himself for his attraction to men, describing it 'as an "affliction" and a "disability" and told readers, "no homosexual has ever chosen this sexual compulsion"'. In the first episode of The Naked Pilgrim Sewell alluded to the loss of his virginity at the hands of a 60-year-old French woman "who knew what she was doing and was determined"; Sewell was 20 at the time. In his autobiography, Sewell states that he lost his (gay) virginity at the age of 15 to a fellow pupil at Haberdashers' Aske’s School. In the late 1960s or early 1970s, when Sewell visited Salvador Dalí at his house in Cadaqués, Dalí convinced Sewell to strip and masturbate for him while he took (or pretended to take) photographs.

"In 1959 I launched into a life of such promiscuity as might suggest that I was making up for the golden years that had passed me by. ... It was not unusual to pick up a companion on my way home ... to have had a fuck one way or the other and be home having a bath by seven, then to go and see my current lover (duration three days to three weeks, perhaps), and on the way home to pick up someone else with whom either to have a quickie before bed or take home for the night - which usually meant another perfunctory fuck first thing in the morning. Throw in a few Jack Rabbit weekends and all this might amount to a thousand fucks a year and easily a thousand sexual partners in a quinquennium."

He was listed under "National Treasures" in the Pink List 2013.

References

Partly based on a Wikipedia article.

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