Lot 199: LINDSAY, Sir COUTTS (1824-1913, painter in oils and watercolours, founder of the Grosvenor Gallery)

PORTRAIT BY SIR ROBERT PONSONBY STAPLES R.I. (1853-1943),
coloured chalks, head and shoulders, profile facing left, signed, dated and inscribed by the artist 'Sir Coutts Lindsay Bt done at Roe Hampton 1899 R. Ponsonby Staples', 15 x 113/4 in (38.1 x 29.8 cm).

REFERENCES: Virginia Surtees, Coutts Lindsay 1824-1913, 1993; The Grosvenor Gallery, edited by Susan Casteras and Colleen Denney, 1996.

In 1899 Coutts Lindsay was living, under the name Lt-Colonel Lindsay, at Roehampton Villa on the north side of the Vale with Kate Madley, whom he married six days after his wife Blanche's death, he being eighty-six and she sixty-two.

Born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ponsonby Staples studied at Louvain, Dresden, Brussels and Paris. Among his sitters were Queen Victoria, Randolph Churchill, Gladstone, King Edward VII, Whistler, Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt and Swinburne.

Purchased from the Ponsonby Staples studio sale in 1991.