Wilfred and Jane de Glehn (lots 55-88)

Introduction
Wilfrid and Jane de Glehn were born into affluence. Wilfrid’s grandfather, Robert von Glehn was a Baltic Baron with estates in Tallin, Estonia who had become a naturalised British subject through marriage. Wilfrid’s uncle, Alfred, was a French steam locomotive designer; his aunt, Louise, was a woman's rights activist and author; his father, Alexander, was a coffee importer; and his mother Fanny (née Monod) was French.

Jane (née Emmet) was from a similarly accomplished background. Born in La Rochelle, New York State, the youngest of ten siblings. Her great-grandfather had left Ireland for America in the early 1800s, where he became Attorney General of New York State. Jane's elder sisters became successful painters, and amongst her brothers was a leading engineer, a lawyer, a decorated soldier and a noted designer of golf courses.

After leaving school Wilfrid studied at the National Art Training School in South Kensington (now the Royal College of Art) before entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1890. The following year he was recruited by John Singer Sargent to assist with his commission to decorate Boston public library. The collaboration heralded a close friendship between the two artists. Some twenty-five years his senior, the American painter's sun dappled impressionist manner had a lasting effect on de Glehn's technique as he developed a similarly fluid style.

In the decade that followed de Glehn began exhibiting with the New English Art Club, and at the Paris Salon, he took a studio in Glebe Place, Chelsea and showed at the Royal Academy in 1896. In 1897 he made his first trip to Venice, very likely with Sargent. In 1899 he exhibited with his French cousin Lucien Monod at the Goupil Gallery in London, he joined the New English Art Club (NEAC), and in 1903 accompanied Sargent to America and exhibited in Boston. There he was introduced to his wife to be, Jane Emmet. Already an accomplished artist, Jane had studied at the Arts Students League in New York under William Merritt Chase and John Henry Twatchman, and then with Frederick William MacMonnies in Paris.

Jane and Wilfrid married in May 1904, following Wilfrid’s inaugural exhibition with Durand Ruel in New York. That summer they joined Sargent in Venice and moved into 47 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. The pattern of their life together was set fair. Typically, they lived in London during the winter when Wilfrid painted portrait commissions and drew models from life. During the summer the couple travelled abroad, frequently joining up with Sargent in Italy or Spain to paint and sketch. Like Wilfrid, Jane exhibited with the NEAC, and showed some of her much admired drawings of friends and acquaintances in Wilfrid’s 1913 show at the Fine Art Society in London.

With the outbreak of the First World War they volunteered as orderlies at the temporary hospital established at Arc-en-Barrois sixty miles from the front line. Wilfrid, fluent in French, acted as an ambulance driver and interpreter. Jane supervised laundry and tea service and sketched soldiers' portraits for the benefit of a limb prosthetics fund (lot 86). Fellow volunteers included Henry Tonks, Professor of Fine Art at the Slade and co-exhibitor with the NEAC, who had trained as a surgeon before switching to painting.

After the War the de Glehn’s made regular trips to the south of France, where Lucien Monod had a house near Cannes. There Jane recorded the landscape around Gattières, north of Vence (lot 80) and painted the monastery at St Cassien (lot 83), whilst Wilfrid set his oil Christ at the Well (lot 64) in the nearby village of Biot. Wilfrid became a Royal Academician in 1932 but later declined the Presidency.


WILFRID DE GLEHN RA (BRITISH 1870-1951)
CLASSICAL NUDE RECLINING BY THE SEA WITH A GALLEON IN THE DISTANCE
with the artist's estate stamp and inventory number 321 on the reverse; oil on canvas; 46 x 61cm; 18 1/4 24in (unframed)