Glyn Philpot, R.A.

Redfern Gallery, London, whence purchased by Mrs Somerset Maugham (and in her collection until the late 1940s)
Reader's Digest Association Collection
Sale, Sotheby's, London, 19th June 1996, lot 45

London, Redfern Gallery, Figure-pieces, Portraits, Landscapes and Flower-pices by Glyn Philpot, 4 November - 27 November 1937.

A.C. Sewter, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937, B.T. Batsford, London, 1951, p.xi, plate 107, illustrated;
Robin Gibson, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, National Portrait Gallery exhibition catalogue, London, 1984-5, pp.35 and 89 (wherein listed as untraced). 

The canvas is unlined. There are a series of small stains to the lower right quadrant which are visible in the catalogue illustration. Under ultra-violet light the stains in the lower right quadrant fluoresce. A small spot in the lower right quadrant on the base of the column and a tiny spot in the upper left quadrant also fluoresce and could be areas of very gentle cosmetic retouching. A series of very light marks in the upper right corner visible under ultra-violet light appear to be very slight stains to the paint surface. Held in a wooden and plaster reproduction frame with a canvas slip which has sustained some minor losses to the edges.
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Painted in 1937, the sitter was the artist's Jamaican housekeeper, Henry Thomas, who had originally travelled to Britain on a merchant vessel as a stoker and had seemingly missed his return boat home. In 1929, he met Oliver Messel on a visit to the National Portrait Gallery and came to work for Philpot shortly afterwards. He first sat for the artist in Balthazar (1929, Private Collection) and after 1932, with the exception of one late and unfinished work, Thomas was the model for all of Philpot's paintings of negro subjects.

Alongside Melancholy Negro (1936, Coll. The Royal Pavilion, Brighton Art Gallery and Museums), Negro as Harlequin was the most expensive picture at the 1937 Redfern Gallery exhibition priced at 350 gns and was purchased by Syrie Maugham, the exuberent ex-wife of the writer Somerset Maugham. As a celebrated interior designer, she was believed responsible for the vogue of implementing an all-white decorative interior colour scheme before the war. She became a close friend and patron of Philpot's, introducing many new client to him over the years and significantly kept the present painting in her collection for many years.