Augustus John, R.A.

Alex Reid & Lefevre, London, 1949

Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, 1957

Mr and Mrs Benjamin Sonnenberg

His sale, Sotheby's Parke Bernet, New York, The Benjamin Sonnenberg Collection, Volume One: Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 9 June 1979, lot 1494

Davis & Long Company, New York

Anthony d'Offay, London, where acquired by Peregrine Pollen in 1979 and thence gifted to the present owner

Michael Holroyd and Malcom Easton, The Art of Augustus John, Secker & Warburg, 1974, no. 47, illustrated p. 138

It is well documented in Miranda Seymour’s biography Ottoline Morrell. Life on the Grand Scale (1992) and in Michael Holroyd’s biography of the artist (1974, revised 1996) that during their affair in 1908 Augustus made many pencil and wash drawings of her at his studio in Fitzroy Street. (Two examples of these pencil and wash drawings are in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff and Manchester City Art Gallery). Their infatuation for each other was short lived but they remained friends until Ottoline’s death in 1938. In Augustus’s own words: '…this fine woman was always prepared to do do battle for Culture, Freedom and the People’. (Chiaroscuro, 1952).