Kate Elizabeth Lechmere was a British painter who with Wyndham Lewis was the co-founder of the Rebel Art Centre in 1914. As far as is known, none of Lechmere's paintings have survived. She served as a nurse in England during the First World War and had a three-year relationship with the poet and critic T.E. Hulme before he was killed. After the war she became a successful milliner.
Kate Lechmere in 1925
Lechmere was the model for Smiling Woman Ascending a Stair, Wyndham Lewis, 1912.
Kate Lechmere pretending to finish her already framed painting Buntem Vogel (Colourful Bird) for the benefit of a press photographer, Rebel Art Centre, 1914
T. E. Hulme in 1912
Vorticism was a London-based modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist manifesto in Blast magazine. Familiar forms of representational art were rejected in favour of a geometric style that tended towards a hard-edged abstraction. Lewis proved unable to harness the talents of his disparate group of avant-garde artists; however, for a brief period Vorticism proved to be an exciting intervention and an artistic riposte to Marinetti's Futurism and the post-impressionism of Roger Fry's Omega Workshops.
Edward Wadsworth, Vorticist Study, 1914, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Rock Drill in Jacob Epstein's studio c.1913
The Dancers Wyndham Lewis, 1912
Kate Lechmere, Cuthbert Hamilton (seated), Edward Wadsworth and Wyndham Lewis at the Rebel Art Centre, March 1914