Lady Gwen Melchett

Details

Glyn Warren Philpot, R.A. (1884-1937)
Lady Gwen Melchett
signed with initials 'GP' (lower right)
oil on canvas
36 x 29 in. (91.5 x 73.7 cm.)
Painted in 1935.

Provenance

The sitter and by descent.

Literature

A.C. Sewter, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937, London, 1951, p. 8, illustrated p. 81.
Exhibition catalogue, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, London, National Portrait Gallery, 1984, p. 86, illustrated.

Exhibited

London, Royal Academy, 1935, no. 39.
London, Tate Gallery, Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by the late Glyn Philpot, R.A. (1884-1937), July - August 1938, no. 44.
Brighton, Art Gallery, Glyn Philpot R.A., 1884-1937, April - May 1953, no. 34.
London, National Portrait Gallery, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, November 1984 - February 1985, no. 59.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

'An understanding between Philpot and his sitter always helped him to produce his best portraits. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his two portraits of Lady Melchett. Since 1927 when she first sat to him she had not only purchased some of his work but also commissioned from him one of the most daring decorative schemes in London for her house. Successfully combining in his new manner elements of '30s neo-classicism and a certain Hollywood glamour, Philpot treads a fine line between the depiction of a bored socialite on a Mediterranean holiday and the reincarnation of one of Garbo's tragic heroines. The diaphanous image of Lady Melchett remains in the mind as one of the most haunting of its kind' (see Exhibition catalogue, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, loc. cit.)

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