Gwen John

Acquired by Sir Antony and Lady Hornby around the late 1960s, and thence by descent to the present owners

London, Matthiesen Ltd, Gwen John Memorial Exhibition, 1946, no. 76

During the mid 20th century, Sir Antony (1904 – 1987) and Lady Hornby (1910-1971) put together one of the foremost collections of Modern Art in Britain including works by European artists such as Georges Braque, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse and Balthus alongside pictures by their British contemporaries including Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Christopher Wood, Stanley Spencer and L.S. Lowry. Sir Antony had been a senior partner at Cazenove and was President of Savoy Hotels Ltd. He developed a particular passion for the art of the avant-garde and his grandchildren fondly remember his apartment at Claridges where he lived for the last two decades of his life surrounded by masterworks of modern art. He had presented Renoir’s A Bather to the National Gallery, London, in 1961 and amongst other bequests, he left Braque’s Glass on a Table (1909-10) to the Tate Collection.