Lot 31: CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH (1874-1936, novelist, poet and journalist)

PORTRAIT BY JAMES GUNN R.A., P.R.P., N.S. (1893-1964),
India ink brushpoint drawing, half-length in profile, writing, signed by the artist and inscribed 'GKC', 9¼ x 7¾ in (23.5 x 19.7 cm).

EXHIBITED: Cheltenham Literary Festival, Faces and Places, 1982.

REFERENCES: Michael Ffinch, G.K. Chesterton, 1986; Emma Letley, Maurice Baring, 1991.

Sir James Gunn was the best-known portraitist of Chesterton and 'one of the most accomplished portrait painters of the twentieth century'. This drawing is a study for his famous Conversation Piece of Chesterton, Belloc and Maurice Baring, now in the National Portrait Gallery. The sittings took place in 1932 at Gunn's studio in Cheyne Row, during which Chesterton and Belloc passed the time composing a 'Ballade of Destruction'.

The picture was a great success at the Royal Academy in April 1933. Punch captioned a cartoon of it: 'Mr Chesterton takes a note of another Sussex tavern, discovered by Mr Belloc, where they sell very good ale.' Chesterton's mother went one better: 'I fail to see anything remarkable in what is merely a picture of two fat men and one thin man.' Wilfrid Meynell christened it: 'Baring, Over-bearing and Past Bearing.'