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Portrait of Iris Tree
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Iris Tree

1897–1968 · English actress and poet, artists' model

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Iris Tree (1897-1968) was an English poet and actress, also known for her work as an artists' model. The daughter of the actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, she studied at the Slade School of Art and moved in bohemian London circles, where her eccentric manner and bobbed hair caused scandal.

In demand as a model, she was painted at the same time by Augustus John, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry, and Jacob Epstein sculpted her. Man Ray photographed her often. As a poet, she contributed to the 1917 Sitwell anthology Wheels and published The Traveller and other Poems in 1927. On screen, her best-known appearance is a cameo in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), where she appeared essentially as herself.