AN ENGLISH CUBIST

WILLIAM ROBERTS:

Portrait of Daphne

Illustration © The Estate of John David Roberts. Reproduced with the permission of the William Roberts Society. Catalogue information based on the catalogue raisonné by David Cleall. For this and full details of the exhibitions cited, see the links below. Any auction prices quoted may not include all fees and taxes, such as VAT and Artist's Resale Right charges.

Portrait of Daphne, 1942–3
Oil on canvas, 70 cm x 60 cm

Born and educated in Brown's Town, Jamaica, Daphne Dennison (1922–1997) was later a student at the Slade School of Art (where she won a prize for figure painting and a scholarship for a fourth year of study) during its Second World War evacuation to Oxford. She met John Roberts in Oxford, during the Roberts family's time there, through their mutual friend Deirdre Knewstub, youngest daughter of John Knewstub of the Chenil Galleries. She afterwards taught painting and drawing at Montego High School for Girls in Jamaica, before making her home in London, where an exhibition of her paintings was held at the Commonwealth Art Gallery in July–Aug. 1973. She was the model for Venus in The Birth of Venus 1954.
PROVENANCE: WR > Daphne Dennison > private collection (by descent)
EXHIBITION HISTORY: Albemarle Gallery 1989