About this lot

Description

Portrait of Nicolette at Paultons Square signed 'Devas' (lower left) oil on canvas 51 x 40.5cm

Footnote: Provenance The Artist's family Sale; Christie's, South Kensington, 1 July 2004, lot 44 The sitter for this portrait, Nicolette Devas (1911-1987), is remembered as a distinguished author and painter whose sister, Caitlin, married Dylan Thomas. Born to Mary Yvonne Majolier and Irish bohemian poet-philosopher, Francis Macnamara, Nicolette was the eldest of four children. In 1916, an ill-fated attempt to establish a ‘Republic of Macnamaraland’ and the pursuit of various cultural and political escapades saw Francis Macnamara desert his family, leaving them destitute. Mary and her children later settled in Blashford on the edge of the New Forest, where they were close neighbours of Augustus John and his family. The Macnamara family formed a close relationship with the John family, and Augustus John would later use his influence and money to enable Nicolette to attend the Slade School of Fine Art, where she met Anthony Devas, later marrying him in 1931. Throughout the 1930s Nicolette established herself as an artist, showing her works at the New English Art Club, the Royal Academy and the London Group. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, she held her first one-woman show at the Storran Gallery.

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