AUGUSTUS JOHN (BRITISH 1878-1961) PORTRAIT HEAD OF MRS. ORPEN Pencil Inscribed From John to Miss Emily with his unhesitating devotion 20 x 21.5cm (7¾ x 8¼ in.) Provenance: Collection of Edgar and Emily Hesslein, New York P.& D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., London Exhibited: New York, Brooklyn Museum, 15 April 1922 London, Thomas Agnew & Sons Ltd., no. 64 London, P.& D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., Augustus John: Early Drawings and Etchings, September-October 1974, no. 46 (illustrated) London, Olympia, Augustus John, February 1999, no. 292 Portrait Head of Mrs Orpen was drawn at Vattetot, Normandy in 1899 while Augustus was on holiday with a group of friends celebrating the marriage of Alice Knewstub to William Rothenstein. Both John and Orpen were captivated by the sight of Alice's (unmarried) sister Grace in her straw hat and chiffon scarf, which she wears in Orpen's oil painting 'Grace by Candlelight', and in the present work. In his biography of Augustus John, Michael Holroyd quotes from John's letter to Grace: 'Seeing [the scarf] round your neck and tinted with your blood, it was unto me even Beauty's embellishment'.The drawing and inscription were made two years before Grace's marriage to William Orpen in 1901. Orpen had been briefly engaged to Emily Scobel, who in 1900 had modelled for three of his paintings, 'The Mirror', 'The English Nude', and 'The Bedroom', but Emily called off the engagement, thinking him 'too ambitious' (p.77, Bruce Arnold, Orpen: Mirror to an Age, Cape 1981, p. 66). The delicate pencil work and hatching in 'Portrait of Mrs Orpen' is typical of the drawings John made after leaving the Slade in 1898. We are grateful to Rebecca John for her kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.