Face to face with a Master

Two portraits in a regional sale catch my eye

I like coincidences. Just as I get started on my long-planned series of Substack articles on the painter Richard Jack (1866 -1952), I spot a couple of his paintings in a forthcoming auction. It’s not often that anything by RJ appears for sale, although I know that the works he sold during his life-time number many hundreds and I have located almost 380 of them in the time I have been researching him.

Having posted two Substacks about Jack, I was working on a third when a Google alert dropped into my email box about the forthcoming auction. Two portraits by Jack make up Lot 241 in a sale at the regional auctioneers Dreweatts in Newbury, Berkshire (https://www.dreweatts.com) to be held on October 18 . The catalogue details are minimal, both in respect of Jack himself (just his dates) and about the works themselves.

Lionel Martin, Chairman of Tate & Lyle

Mrs Martin

It’s probably fair to say these are not prime examples of Jack’s talents. In between his more glamorous commissions (he was a favourite of King George V and Queen Mary and painted both Royal portraits and some extraordinarily beautiful oils of rooms at Buckingham Palace) Richard Jack produced a steady stream of commissioned portraits of British worthies between 1910 and the mid-30s from his studio in Earls Court. The portraits of Mrs and Mrs Martin are typical of that aspect of his career.

The sitters are not particularly prominent individuals - Lionel Martin was a respected sales manager at a Liverpool division of Tate & Lyle and eventually (at the time of these paintings) he had made it to the company’s main Board. It’s hard to find much about either of the Martins beyond the basics - they lived an upper middle class life in Hampstead and Mr Martin was involved in commercial organisations - he was Chairman of the London Chamber of Commerce - and the affairs of the Port of London, whose docks were clearly crucial to Tate & Lyle’s trade of importing sugar.

I do know - from unearthing several contemporary newspaper cuttings - that they both spent a good deal of time in helping to run and raise funds for one of the London hospitals which, of course, were then all charities. This was long before the NHS.

As for the paintings on offer, well, the portrait of Mrs M is, to my eyes, a bit perfunctory. Mr M gets a rather better treatment - his face is full of character and detail.

Where the paintings have been since they were completed, Dreweatts doesn’t seem to know. They certainly appear in the catalogue of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 1929 - two years after Jack signed and dated them. Therefore we can assume he had enough regard for the works himself to ask the Martins if he could exhibit the works for this prestigious annual show. As an RA, senior enough to be invited to sit on the six person selection committee for Summer Exhibitions, Jack did not have to go through the usual selection lottery for his own works. Most years when he was in his prime you can find up to half a dozen paintings in annual RA shows.

A bit of provenance would be helpful, I think, as Dreweatts’ estimate for the pair is £3,000 to £5,000. To hit the upper end of that spread I think they might need to find a buyer who has some personal link to the sitters, rather than just a passing interest in Richard Jack’s works. Is this a reasonable price estimate for a portrait pair by Richard Jack? It’s hard to say, as past prices vary greatly. A couple of years ago I bought a lovely Canadian landscape (Jack moved to Montreal in the 1930s and stayed there the rest of his life) for a few hundred pounds. Some of the more noted works from the height of his British career can fetch many thousands.

It will be interesting to see what October’s sale brings.

You can read my first two Substack posts on RJ here :-

https://peterharkness.substack.com/p/fame-fortune-and-glittering-prizes

https://peterharkness.substack.com/p/too-nude-for-sunderland