This is something of an aside
from my usual run of queries, but . . . . .
In the summer of 1900, Kipling sat to the well-known portrait
painter, John Collier - the resulting portrait is now at
Bateman's, and is the three-quarter length one, full-face, of RK
standing, pipe in hand, in his study at the Elms. (The head is
used on the dust-jacket of Andrew Lycett's biography -
personally, I don't think it is nearly so good a likeness as
Phil Burne-Jones' one taken the previous year.)
But this was the second portrait of Kipling that Collier made -
the previous one had been painted in 1891, just before his
health broke down, and he went off on his hoped-for world
cruise. In it, he is again facing the artist, in a half-length
full-face portrait, and he is wearing what (as a naval officer)
I would refer to as an ice-cream suit - a single-breasted white
tunic, buttoned high up the neck, these days, I believe,
referred to as a 'Nehru jacket'. This portrait also now hangs at
Bateman's, I believe.
Question - who commissioned the 1891 portrait and why? In 1891.
although he was becoming wealthy enough, and had, in his two
uncles-by-marriage, connections with the visual art world in
London, would Kipling have commissioned it himself. for
himself? Or was it for Wolcott Balestier? Anyone know?
Alastair Wilson