Lot Essay
Reed, one of Augustus John's more eccentric friends, was living with him at Alderney Manor in 1913, the only year in which he exhibited with the New English Arts Club. Reed was better known as an archaeologist and poet than as a painter (see exhibition catalogue, New English Art Club Centenary Exhibition, London, Christie's, 1986, pp. 92-3). He also travelled to Tenerife in 1913 with landscape painter James Dickson Innes (1887-1914), whose influence can be seen clearly in the present work.