Maxwell Ashby Armfield, R.W.S. (Ringwood, Hampshire 1881-1972 Warminster, Wiltshire)
This lot is offered without reserve. Artist's Res… Read more
Maxwell Ashby Armfield, R.W.S. (Ringwood, Hampshire 1881-1972 Warminster, Wiltshire)

Portrait of Frank Smith of Hungerford

Details
Maxwell Ashby Armfield, R.W.S. (Ringwood, Hampshire 1881-1972 Warminster, Wiltshire)
Portrait of Frank Smith of Hungerford
signed with monogram and inscribed 'op/535' (upper right)
tempera on board
15 ¾ x 24 in. (40 x 61 cm.)
Painted in 1962.
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 9 November 1984, lot 150.
with The Fine Art Society, London, June 1990.
Special notice
This lot is offered without reserve. Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Lot Essay

In his autobiography Sewell mentioned meeting Frank Smith, an art dealer 'whose wife kept a little china shop at the north end of Church Street Kensington', from whom he bought a painting. He then recalled 'years later, long after his death, Frank Smith stared at me from the window of the Fine Art Society - a portrait painted by Maxwell Armfield - I bought it, an act of purest sentiment' (B. Sewell, Outsider: always almost: never quite, London, 2011, p. 224)

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