With the artist's studio stamp

Inscribed on label (to reverse of stretcher) Portrait of Mrs S.F.Gore painted by S.F.Gore in 1911 at 31 Mornington Crescent

Oil on canvas, 52 by 46 cm

Provenance: the artist's son Frederick Gore; on loan to the Tate Gallery; Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York; Private Collection U.S.A.

Exhibited: Arts Council of Great Britain, Spencer Frederick Gore, London, 1955, no.26, p.12; Redfern Gallery, 1962, Spencer Gore and Frederick Gore, no.56; Harrow School, London, 1987, Spencer Frederick Gore, no.32; Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, British Modernist Art (1905-1930), p.33, no.26

Gore's wife Mollie Kerr was the artist's primary sitter in portraits from 1911, when the two met, to his untimely death in 1914. 1911 was a key year in Gore's short artistic career, coinciding with the foundation of the Camden Town Group of which he was the first president. The remarkable and vibrant use of colour in this painting bears witness to the group's response to the Impressionist and Post Impressionist artists from Continental Europe. Such work is markedly more avant-garde than much British art from the tail end of the Edwardian period. Gore's painting of Kerr, The Artist's Wife ( acc.TO3561), painted two years later in 1913 was presented to the Tate by the artist's son in 1983. Of Gore's portraits of his wife the Hirschl & Adler catalogue (see literature above) describes the present painting as "perhaps the most initmate of the series".