Portrait of Meredith Frampton

A painter of children and landscapes, Christabel Cockerell spent her life at the centre of Britain's artistic establishment; her cousin, Sir Sydney Cockerell was secretary to the Kelmscott Press and later a distinguished Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and her husband, Sir George Frampton R.A. (1860-1928) was the sculptor of Peter Pan, still to be seen in Kensington Palace Gardens. They met at the Royal Academy Schools in 1882, married, and had a son, George Vernon Meredith (1894-1984). The present portrait is one of three of Meredith offered at Sotheby's London, on 13 November 1985, lots 181-3. In later life, he returned the compliment, painting a particularly fine portrait of his mother. Educated at St. John's Wood, and the Royal Academy Schools, like his mother he exhibited at the Royal Academy, his prefered subjects being still life in a style marked by its vivid focus and slightly Surrealist flavour. Although he enjoyed considerable success in the inter-war years, failing eyesight caused him to stop painting in 1945, and it was not until a retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1982 that his reputation was fully established.