Maxwell Armfield - Portrait of Constance Smedley, three-quarter length, with a violin

signed, inscribed and dated 'MAXWELL ARMFIELD/FECIT MDCCCCVI OCT.VI-OCT XVIII' (lower right, with a sketch of a rainbow beneath)
oil on canvas
28½ x 24¼ in.
Price Realized £5,400
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This pensive, almost Whistlerian, portrait depicts the writer Constance Smedley, who studied with Armfield at the Birmingham School of Art and later became his wife. They collaborated on a number of community, decorative and theatrical Arts projects, in London, the Cotswolds, California and New York. Music was a common passion, as was the language of flowers, which formed the basis of their publication: The Armfields' Flower Book (1922).

It is unusual for Armfield to paint in oil rather than watercolour, or the tempera which became a hallmark of his subsequent work.