Lot 49 Property from the Collection of the late Pauline, Lady Rumbold
When my aunt, Pauline, Lady Rumbold, died earlier this year at the age of 81 she left a collection of pictures accumulated over a lifetime rich in people, parties, husbands, lovers and all the civilised pleasures art, literature and music afford.
The daughter of playboy aristocrat and Gargoyle Club founder David Tennant and actress Hermione Baddeley, she was as much an acquirer of friends as of art and perhaps it's that which gives her collection its unique personality. So many of the paintings she bought or was given came from artists who were long-standing friends (Michael Wishart, Craigie Aitchison), while I like to think the Lucien Freud drawing may well be a momento of her love affair with Freud as a legendarily beautiful young woman. By the end of her life every surface of her house in Wilton bore a picture or an object and every shelf a book, many of which have gone to friends and relations who sorely miss Pauline's exuberance, intelligence, irreverence and generosity. The public auction of these pictures, the finest in her collection, is a fitting tribute to the sensibility of a woman who was an actress, poet, wife, mother and intellectual, but perhaps first and foremost a connoisseur of life itself.
Laura Tennant, October 2009.
When my aunt, Pauline, Lady Rumbold, died earlier this year at the age of 81 she left a collection of pictures accumulated over a lifetime rich in people, parties, husbands, lovers and all the civilised pleasures art, literature and music afford.
The daughter of playboy aristocrat and Gargoyle Club founder David Tennant and actress Hermione Baddeley, she was as much an acquirer of friends as of art and perhaps it's that which gives her collection its unique personality. So many of the paintings she bought or was given came from artists who were long-standing friends (Michael Wishart, Craigie Aitchison), while I like to think the Lucien Freud drawing may well be a momento of her love affair with Freud as a legendarily beautiful young woman. By the end of her life every surface of her house in Wilton bore a picture or an object and every shelf a book, many of which have gone to friends and relations who sorely miss Pauline's exuberance, intelligence, irreverence and generosity. The public auction of these pictures, the finest in her collection, is a fitting tribute to the sensibility of a woman who was an actress, poet, wife, mother and intellectual, but perhaps first and foremost a connoisseur of life itself.
Laura Tennant, October 2009.
John Craxton, R.A. (b. 1922)
Cretan landscape
Closed16 December 2009
Price Realised
GBP 17,500
More Information
Specialist note
The area is called Malevisi, near Heraklion, where the name of the wine Malmsey originates. We are very grateful to John Craxton for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot.