The Madame Ramage portrait is a bit of a mystery and I have no idea why it didn’t go to Madame Ramage. I strongly suspect that the subject didn’t like the painting and this is the only incidence that I know about where one of my mothers paintings was not accepted. She always had a policy that if the person commissioning the portrait didn’t like it then they didn’t have to pay for it.

The only other information that I have is a brief note under photograph of it in one of her portfolio books says, “Madame Ramage, St Raphael, Var”. Even the diary entries seem very brief.

The painting literally knocked around in her studio for twenty two years until we cleared the place out after death. In that time it had acquired a small hole in the canvas in the forehead, digitally restored here, and several splatters of paint.

Diary Entries