Sir William Rothenstein

Catalogue entry

T01869 PORTRAIT OF SIR JOHN ROTHENSTEIN C.B.E. 1938

Not inscribed
Oil on canvas, 30×19 1/4 (76.2×49.5)
Presented by Lady Dynevor through the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1974
Coll: Sir John and Lady Rothenstein; Lady Dynevor 1973
Repr. Sir John Rothenstein, Summer's Lease, 1965 on the dust jacket; The Times, 27 July 1974

Sir William Rothenstein painted this portrait of his elder son in the summer of 1938, soon after the latter was appointed Director of the Tate Gallery. Sir John has written (letter to the compiler of 19 March 1975): ‘This portrait was painted in the drawing room of my parents’ house at Far Oakridge, Near Stroud, Gloucs., and shows me working on the proofs of my Life and Death of Conder which was published later that year'. He recalls that his father painted ‘very slowly and laboriously’, and that the number of sittings on this occasion seemed (as it invariably did) ‘infinite’.

Other portraits of Sir John by his father include child portraits in the Ulster Museum, Belfast, and in Bradford City Art Gallery, a drawing at Worcester College, Oxford, and a double portrait of Sir John and Lady Rothenstein at the Centre Beaubourg, (Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne), Paris. A group portrait of the artist's children in fancy dress, ‘The Princess Baldroubadour’, is also in the Tate's collection (3953).

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1974-6: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1978

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