Elizabeth Belloc, Angela Latham (1894-1980) A half-length p...

Hammer

£110

Elizabeth Belloc, Angela Latham (1894-1980)
A half-length portrait of Elizabeth Belloc - thus titled bottom left - by Angela Latham. Oil on board, 33 x 49 cms, some slight loss of paint;
together with a pencil sketch by Latham, evidently a preliminary drawing for the oil portrait, titled 'Liz Belloc'. 31 x 43 cms; together with another pencil portrait sketch by Latham of Belloc, approx. 30 x 30cm; together with Hilaire Belloc: 'Esto Perpetua. Algerian Studies and Impressions.' Reissue, Reader's Library, 1911. Small 8vo. Mounted colour frontis, text illustrations, signed & inscribed by Hilaire Belloc to Angela Latham on FFEP "Angela Latham. H. Belloc/Author. Ecclesia Mater, Theophilus in Pace", original cloth gilt. Angela Latham (1898-1980). Artist, particularly portraits, exhibitor at the Royal Academy though apparently not herself an R.A. Married to Peter Latham, professor of music and one time head of MI5.
Elizabeth Belloc. (1900-?) Third child, second daughter of Hilaire Belloc, herself with aspirations in her youth to become a painter though nothing came of them. Estranged from her family for long periods, she led a peripatetic, bohemian, not to say eccentric life for many years, in London and on the Continent. H. Belloc 's biographer, Robert Speaight, describes Elizabeth as 'an emaciated ghost of the 1920's drifting about London, clad invariably in a dark blue cloche hat, until the end of her days. Quite often she slept on the Embankment ...making occasional forays into the kitchens of her rich friends for sustenance.' Calling upon the Duff Coopers late one night, Elizabeth 'did not wait for a plate to be put before her, still less for the loaf to be sliced. With long and unclean nails, she scratched into it, tugging away the soft bread from the crust in lumpish handfuls. Then, like a stray dog which had satisfied its hunger by scavenging in a dustbin, she arose and left them without a word.'
In the late 1930's Elizabeth was drifting about the Continent and had to be rescued by her father from France in the Spring of 1940, she herself apparently unaware that war had been declared.
This portrait shows Elizabeth as a young woman, head slightly tilted, looking off to one side, her expression pensive, perhaps foreshadowing her life to come.