Portrait of Robert Colquhoun in an Armchair

John Rothenstein wrote about Colquhoun and MacBryde, 'The two also shared a self-respect with regard to their appearance, in the case of MacBryde amounting to vanity, on Colquhoun's behalf, as well as his own. One evening Colquhoun, whose sight troubled him at times, put on a pair of spectacles. MacBryde snatched them off his face and crushed them angrily under his heel. Before going out for a night MacBryde would iron their trousers with the utmost care and Lucian Freud once saw him ironing one of Colquhoun's shirts with a teaspoon' (see Modern English Painters: Volume Three Hennell to Hockney, London, 1984, p. 173).