Lot 123: QUENNELL, Sir PETER COURTNEY (1905-1993, author and critic)

PORTRAIT WITH HIS TEDDY BEAR BY HIS MOTHER MARJORIE QUENNELL (d. 1972),
watercolour, half-length, profile facing left, showing Quennell at the age of seven years, hand on hip, with his teddy bear, signed and dated 1912 by the artist, inscribed with the name of sitter in capitals in the upper left-hand corner after the style of Holbein, 18¾ x 13 in (47.6 x 33 cm).

EXHIBITED: Cheltenham Literary Festival, Faces and Places, 1982.

In his autobiography, The Marble Foot, Peter Quennell writes of his mother's ambition to be a serious artist. She was a book illustrator and assisted her husband 'C. H. B.' in the illustration of Everyday Things in England.