Hermit nun became unlikely television star with her programmes on art history

Sister Wendy Beckett, who has died aged 88, was a Catholic nun who left her cloistered life in the British countryside to become an unlikely international celebrity by presenting television programmes on art history.

She retreated to a life of seclusion in 1970, officially designated a consecrated virgin by the Catholic Church. She lived as a hermit in a caravan on the grounds of the Carmelite monastery at Quidenham, Norfolk, in eastern England, spending seven hours a day in prayer and translating Latin religious tracts.

After receiving permission from the church, she began to study art history, mainly through books and reproductions on postcards. She began to write for magazines and in 1988 published the first of more than 30 books, Contemporary Women Artists.

In 1991, she appeared in a BBC documentary about the National Gallery, discussing Rembrandt. Although she was on the screen for only four minutes, viewers were transfixed by the bucktoothed nun in full religious habit and oversized glasses, speaking with wit, warmth – and a slight speech impediment. She soon became the host of her own BBC show, Sister Wendy’s Odyssey, a series of 10-minute segments in which she described artworks.

At the beginning, she was shown emerging from her book-filled trailer, as if making her first forays into the wider world of art – which, in large measure, was true.

She proved to be charming and at ease in front of the camera. Always speaking without a script, she became known to her producers as ‘‘one-take Wendy’’. With her expressive face and hands, she described art with a mixture of glee, ecstasy and wonder.

‘‘I force myself to look at it, take it in and tell you in words what I have seen, which is not an easy thing to do because it means going deep into your reactions,’’ she said in 1997. ‘‘I can’t do anything without the work of art being there to draw it out of me.’’

For her second series, Sister Wendy’s Grand Tour (1994), she made her first trip to continental Europe, visiting museums in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Madrid, Florence and Berlin. (By then, she had an agent who substantially raised her fee and negotiated a clause that allowed her to attend daily mass.)

Sister Wendy became a media sensation, and her two series were the most successful arts programmes on British television since Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation in the late 1960s. Many viewers found her shows inspiring, but some were shocked by her enthusiastic appreciation of the carnal nature of many works, including her oft-repeated description of a nude couple: ‘‘I love all those glistening strands of his hair, and her pubic hair is so soft and fluffy.’’

Nun/TV presenter b February 25, 1930 d December 26, 2018 ‘‘I’m absolutely astonished and bewildered to find people commenting on my delight in a naked body.’’

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She answered with a stern rebuke based on her reading of scripture. ‘‘I’m absolutely astonished and bewildered to find people commenting on my delight in a naked body,’’ she said. ‘‘Never, ever, has anyone suggested that parts of the body were not quite right, that God made a mistake, that they should be passed over. It’s appropriate to comment on everything in the painting. I’m not going to deny God’s glory by pandering to narrow-mindedness.’’

For her most ambitious TV series, Sister Wendy’s Story of Painting, she set out to chronicle painting from prehistoric times to Picasso. She brought a distinctly 20th-century interpretation to the work of 14th-century painter Giotto: ‘‘Think of how dark it was outside without him, as if everyone was listening to the radio,’’ she said. ‘‘And suddenly he comes forward and it is, yes, like the coming of television. Suddenly people have this great colour. This television.’’

Explaining how the work of the tortured Vincent van Gogh resonates so strongly with people more than a century after his death, she said: ‘‘We are an anxious, neurotic generation, and we warm to this neurotic man, struggling so bravely to impose calm upon the turmoil of his mental stresses.’’

Wendy Mary Beckett was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She soon moved with her family to Edinburgh, where her father studied medicine. The family later returned to South Africa.

She read constantly as a child and entered religious life in 1946. She joined the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a teaching order, and studied English literature at Oxford, graduating in 1953 with highest honours. One of her professors was JRR Tolkien.

At Oxford, she maintained a vow of silence, living in a religious community and rarely speaking with her classmates. She taught in schools in South Africa from 1954 to 1970, when she began to suffer from epilepsy. She was released from her order and lived alone at the Quidenham monastery, though she was not a Carmelite.

She continued to write books, including works on art history, Catholic saints and personal meditations, until 2011. She donated all her earnings to the monastery, which did not have a television.

Survivors include a brother. – Washington Post

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