Penelope Tree
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Penelope Tree (born 1950) is an Anglo-American supermodel.
Penelope was born to Anglo-American bisexual journalist, investor and MP Ronald Tree (grandson of retailer Marshall Field); and socialite/Democratic political activist mother Marietta Peabody Tree (granddaughter of Rev. Endicott Peabody).
Her family objected to her career as a model, and when she was first photographed at the age of thirteen by Diane Arbus, her father vowed he would sue if the pictures were published.[1]
Cecil Beaton also photographed Tree's elfin face, one that made "The Tree" a match for "The Twig" in the 1960s. By the time Diana Vreeland sent her to Richard Avedon, she was seventeen and her father had relented. David Bailey described Penelope as 'an Egyptian Jimminy Cricket". In 1967, she moved into Bailey's flat in London's Primose Hill neighbourhood. It became a hang-out for spaced-out hippies during the "Swinging Sixties" who, Bailey recalled, would be "smoking joints I had paid for and calling me a capitalist pig!" In another famous quote, John Lennon, asked to encapsulate Tree in three words, called her, "Hot, Hot, Hot, Smart, Smart, Smart!" She has been extensively compared to 'The Beetles' for inspiring the swinging 60's movement and for galvanizing a generation of young American females.
In 1974, Bailey and Tree split up and she moved to Sydney, Australia, to remove herself from the focus of the fashion photographer's camera. She appeared in the British comedy film The Rutles in 1978.[2] She is the half-sister of US author Frances FitzGerald and the niece of former Massachusetts governor Endicott Peabody.
A long time resident of Australia, she has been married twice, once to the South African rock musician Ricky Fataar (who was a member of The Rutles. She has two children, Michael, who rejected a modeling contract in 2006; and Paloma Fataar (a graduate of Bard College and a student of Tibetan Buddhism and music).
