Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham

Inscriptionback to top

Lower right red (discoloured to pink) ink stamp of Lambert Memorial Fund: ‘Certified by / The Lambert / Memorial Fund / AS THE WORK OF / G.W. LAMBERT, A.R.A. / 1930 / [signed in brown ink] Gladys Owen / Basil Burdett / JOINT HON. SECRETARIES.’
Printed ‘With Care’ label (removed to NPG RP 4846) inscr. in ink in Amy Lambert’s hand: ‘Pencil portrait of / R.B. Cunninghame-Graham / by G.W. Lambert, AR.A.’
On reverse, pencil study for portrait of Sir George Houston Reid (NPG 4846a, see entry).

This portraitback to top

George Washington Lambert was a friend with whom Graham could share his love of horses and cattle-ranching. They rode out to escape the choked streets of London and – according to Lambert’s biographer Andrew Motion – the pressures of domesticity.[1] ‘A fruitful and refreshing friendship was that with R.B. Cunninghame-Graham, whose great love and knowledge of horses, adventurous spirit and intellectuality made a direct appeal to one so nearly akin in type,’ wrote Lambert’s wife Amy. ‘Lambert spent many rejuvenating hours in his society, riding with him in Hyde Park or over Richmond and Roehampton […], or in those more serious occupations of artist and model, when Lambert painted a portrait of Cunninghame-Graham standing at the head of his favourite horse.’[2]

This painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1913 and then 20 years later at the Royal Academy, though the second time it was listed as ‘Portrait of a horse’ – for Graham had painted himself out of the picture (see ‘All known portraits’). Amy Lambert was indignant: ‘I cannot resist expressing the shock I experienced on discovering that the portrait of Cunninghame-Graham was subsequently painted out by himself, as he objected to the likeness. So much for human vanity, as against professed friendship and artistic appreciation.’[3]

NPG 4846 is undated, but is almost certainly a study related to the 1913 painting; for a closely related drawing see the whole-length in the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery (QTOOB384). See also the preparatory oil sketch in the Stuartholme-Behan Collection of Australian Art, University of Queensland (Behan 38).[4] Further supporting the date of c.1913 is the sketch of Sir George Reid on the reverse (NPG 4846a), which itself relates to a whole-length painting begun in 1913 (now Parliament House, Canberra). In that year too Lambert showed a glamorous portrait of Graham’s niece at the RA.[5]

The sketch of Graham’s head remained with the artist until his death in 1930, when a prominent Lambert Memorial Fund stamp was applied to the sheet. The signatories and secretaries of the Fund, Gladys Owen and Basil Burdett, were also the organizers of the Lambert Memorial Loan Exhibition at the Education Department Galleries, Sydney (November–December 1930), and it is possible that NPG 4846 was included in that exhibition.

After Graham’s death in 1936 there was a small surge of portrait offers to the National Portrait Gallery, many from artists, though all were declined. In 1942 Mrs Lambert offered a gift of four works by her husband, including a self-portrait (NPG 3115) and the pencil head of Graham, and these were readily accepted.[6]

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Motion 1986, p.56.
2) Lambert 1938, p.53.
3) Lambert 1938, p.54.
4) The Lambert catalogue raisonné attributes a date of 1911 to NPG 4846, on the grounds that Graham’s favourite horse Pampa died in 1911 (see Gray 1996, D54, P135). However Pampa was a dark-coloured horse, as shown in Lavery’s equestrian portrait (see ‘All known portraits, exh. 1898’) and identified on inscribed photographs of that work, and the horse in the 1913 painting is chestnut brown with different markings.
5) Miss Olave Cunninghame Graham, RA 1913 (810), now ‘The Red Shawl’; AG of New S Wales, Sydney.
6) The drawing of Graham remained unaccessioned until 1971 when it was incorporated into the Primary Collection; see NPG Report of the Trustees 1967–5.

Physical descriptionback to top

Head-and-shoulders slightly to left, eyes facing, wearing a stiff collar and bowler hat; at lower left, sketches of left and right hands.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 1985.

Provenanceback to top

Given by the artist’s widow, Mrs Amy B. Lambert, June 1942.

Reproductionsback to top

Taylor 2005, p.152.

View all known portraits for Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham