Pencil on paper
18 x 13 cm
“My mother was one of his favourite subjects over the years, from touchingly affectionate drawings of her as a young beauty, then as a mother, or in her favourite occupation – reading. This particular drawing was a study for an oil portrait that featured on the cover of an early edition of the ‘Oxford Companion to English Literature’, painted in 1933.
RESERVED
Abandoning his medical studies to become an artist, in 1905 Lamb moved to London where he studied under Augustus John and William Orpen at their short-lived Chelsea Art School. A highly gifted draughtsman he soon moved to Paris, and painted in Brittany. On his return to London he made his name with an extraordinary full-life sized portrait of Lytton Strachey (now in the Tate).