Antony Penrose

Co-Director of the Lee Miller Archives and The Penrose Collection

Antony Penrose is the son of the American photographer Lee Miller, fashion model for Vogue and Vanity Fair, surrealist photographer, fashion photographer, war correspondent, combat photographer, gourmet cook. His father was Roland Penrose, surrealist artist and poet, who founded ICA in 1947, and biographer of Picasso, Miró, Man Ray and Tàpies.

He grew up in Farley Farm House, the old Sussex his parents’ farmhouse in the village of Chiddingly. Life was a perpetual arts congress where British artists like Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Richard Hamilton, John Craxton, and Kenneth Armitage mixed with leading figures from Europe such as Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Jean Dubuffet and where Pablo Picasso visited in 1950. What seemed one long hedonistic gathering was a hive of activity and some of the great achievements in modern art of the last century had Farley Farm House as their start point.

In 1977 on his mother’s death Antony Penrose and his late wife Suzanna founded The Lee Miller Archive, based on the collection of negatives, prints and papers found after she had died. As a result, he has written numerous books, articles and two plays on the subject of his parents and their associates. His biography of his mother The Lives of Lee Miller has been made into a feature film titled LEE, (2023) starring Kate Winslet as Lee Miller in which he was the factual consultant.

Broadcasting includes BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour, Today and Front Row, and on television he has appeared on BBC’s The One Show, Flog It, The Culture Show, Picasso, The Beauty and The Beast and on CNN. He is an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society, lecturing widely in UK and overseas. He is known as a curator of photography, and is an artist and film maker in his own right.