The Subject

The watercolour portrays Rab Butler aged 3 and his younger sister Juliet. Born on 9th December 1902 at Attock Serai in India, R(ichard) A(usten) (fondly known as Rab) Butler, baron of Saffron Walden, died on 8th March 1982 at Great Yeldham, Essex. During his life he was one of the giant figures of British politics. There is a Butler Society devoted to his achievements. A Conservative, he was responsible for the 1944 Education Act which established free secondary education. He was at various times the leader of the party, the chancellor, the home secretary and the foreign secretary.

The Artist

Professor of Fine Art at the famous Slade School of Art, London, from 1917 to 1930, Henry Tonks influenced a whole generation of British artists, encouraging in them a love of the human figure as a vehicle for artistic expression.

At first he studied medicine, at Brighton from 1882 to 1885. He attended drawing lessons at the London Technical Institute. There he met the artist Frederick Brown and, when Brown became Principal at the Slade School, he brought in Tonks to teach there.

Famous artists he taught included Stanley Spencer, William Roberts and Mark Gertler.

Works by the artist

According to an old label this work formerly belonged to C.K. Butler esq., Doverton House, Shineham. The Herbert purchased it in 1970 the add to the collection of British figure drawings, a collection which ranges from nude studies by artists for large figure compositions, to compositional studies, to portraits such as this. The previous year the Herbert had purchased another figure drawing by Tonks, a pencil drawing for his painting 'Old Jane the House Keeper'.

The Tate Gallery hold twelve works by him, many of them portraits or figure compositions which seem less ambitious nowadays. One of his later works, a double portrait of the leading British Post-Impressionist painters Sickert and Steer in their old age, treats them with a levity and liveliness which was impossible for most of his portrait subjects.