Beschreibung:

λ ELSIE FARLEIGH (BRITISH 1900-1981) PORTRAIT OF A BOY WEARING A HAT, DAVID ANTHONY Oil on canvas Signed with initials (lower right); further signed and dated 1932 (verso) 46 x 35.5cm (18 x 13¾ in.) Provenance: Ida Affleck Graves (1902-1999), Private Collection, commissioned a portrait of her son, David Anthony, either gifted by or purchased direct from the artist Thence by descent, Anna Marks, Private Collection (sister of the sitter) Inherited by the present owner in 2020 Ida Affleck Graves carved a career as a novelist, artist and sculptor catapulted by the support of the Bloomsbury group. Graves was born in Mysuru, India in 1902, daughter of Colonel Douglas H. McDonnel Graves and Mabel Alice Petley. Graves was educated at boarding school in Eastbourne from the age of 6 and continued her studies in Surrey. Graves studied English literature at the University of London and took a keen interest in sculpture, attending evening classes at Chelsea College of Arts. By 1920s, Graves was mixing with other creatives in London and joined the Bloomsbury Group forming close relationships with artists such as Bernard Meninsky Eric Schilsky and Elsie Farleigh. Graves was a keen writer and poet. In 1929, Hogarth Press, run by fellow Bloomsbury members, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, published her first collection of poems titled 'The China Cupboard and Other Poems'. Graves went on to publish a number of novels sometimes using the pseudonym Affleck Graves. She had great success with novels such as 'Elarna Cane' and 'Ostrobogulous Pigs'. Grave had two children with her first husband Herbert Henry Marks, Anthony and Anna. The present lots illustrate her children through sculpture and painting.