The Village

The current painting was in the collection of Lucy Carrington Wertheim (1883-1971), a renowned British art dealer and collector. In 1930 she opened her first gallery at 3-5 Burlington Gardens, Mayfair. It has been suggested that it was the artist Frances Hodgkins who finally persuaded or perhaps goaded Mrs Wertheim to move from enthusiastic supporter of 'Modern art' to a fully fledged Gallery owner. Wertheim recalls the incident in her 1947 book Adventure in Art - 'Frances exclaimed to my husband, 'Your wife should open a gallery for us poor artists: her enthusiasm would make it a success!' ... Those words however, spoken more than half in jest, sowed a seed in my mind that was to bear fruit later.'

Artists either exhibited or supported by Mrs Wertheim, other than Alan Reynolds, included Walter Sickert, Rodney Gladwell, Humphrey Slater, Helmut Kolle, Vivin Hume, Phelan Gibb, John Bigge and John Banting, Henry Stockley, Nando Manetti, Rowland Suddaby, Leslie Hurry, Isla Rodmell, Kenneth Hall, Basil Rakoczi, John Melville, Feliks Topolski, David Burton, Cedric Morris, Alfred Wallis, Frances Hodgkins, Elizabeth Rivers, Mostyn Lewis and Jose Christopherson, among many others. She is perhaps most notable as the patron of Christopher Wood.