Sir William Rothenstein

Miss Edith Lockyer Williams

1893

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Not on display

Artist: Sir William Rothenstein 1872–1945
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1232 × 597 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Professor Basil Williams 1943
Reference: N05407

Display caption

Rothenstein lived for four years in Paris from the age of seventeen. His artist friends were modern portrait painters: Whistler, Conder, Toulouse-Lautrec and the caricaturist Phil May. He returned to Britain with a commission to make prints of the dons at Oxford, which he published as 'Oxford Characters'. This portrait of Miss Williams was a commission from her brother. Both of them were academics, and became teachers. It was Rothenstein's first portrait on his return, painted in a studio he borrowed in Chelsea, which had been one of Sickert's. The portrait is deliberately eccentric, in its tall format, sharp lighting, her pose on the move, but most of all in the unflattering portrayal of the subject. It was never exhibited.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N05407 MISS EDITH LOCKYER WILLIAMS 1893

Inscr. ‘Will R. 93’ b.l.
Canvas, 48 1/2×23 1/2 (123×60); 2 (5) of painted surface is turned over on top and left side.
Presented by Professor Basil Williams 1943.
Coll: Professor Williams was the sitter's brother.

This was the artist's first commission when he returned to London and was painting under Whistler's influence. Miss Lockyer Williams afterwards became Mrs Dalhousie Young.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II