About this lot

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§ Henry Lamb, MC, RA (British, 1883-1960) Portrait of David McKenna (1911-2003), seated at a clavichord signed and dated 'Lamb 35' (lower right); artist's label to the reverse oil on canvas 80 x 90cm (31 x 35in)
Provenance: David McKenna and by family descent Exhibited: The Royal Academy Exhibition, cat.no.1053 (date untraced) Other Notes: David McKenna was born in London to a family with strong connections to both the political and artistic worlds of Edwardian Britain. His father was the Liberal MP, Reginald McKenna, then First Lord of the Admiralty and later Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer under Herbert Asquith. He was also close friends with the architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. His mother, Pamela Jekyll, was the daughter of the wtiter and artist, Agnes Graham, who was muse of Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones in 1876. She was also the niece of garden designer, Gertrude Jekyll. McKenna studied at Eton and he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Engineering and Mathematics. In 1934 he joined the London Passenger Transport Board as assistant to the director, and this began a highly successful career in the transport sector. He became Assistant General Manager of the Southern Region of British Railways in 1955, eventually succeeding to chairman and general manager of the Southern Region. The Victoria line on the London underground is largely credited to McKenna. The present portrait was painted a year after his marriage to Lady Cecilia Keppel, daughter of the 9th Earl of Albemarle. Henry Lamb was a close friend of the family and this is most probably the reason why Lamb has captured, so well, his friend's likeable character in the portrait. It also demonstrates McKenna's love of music. He was a member of the Bach Choir, sang Purcell to A J Balfour on his deathbed, was chairman of the Sadler's Well Trust and vice-president of the Royal College of Music.

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