Augustus John, R.A.

Leicester Galleries, London, where acquired by Sir Antony and Lady Hornby, and thence by descent to the present owners

London, Leicester Galleries, Exhibition of Works by Augustus John, May 1943, no. 51

The present work relates to a series of studies titled 'Bathers', dating to circa 1906-7, with the shawled figure depicting Dorelia. See David Fraser Jenkins, Augustus John: Studies for Compositions, National Museum of Wales, 1978, nos, 40 - 43 for related works.

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.