88

Magdalena Łanuszka


7. Portrait of a Lady in York
Art Gallery (YORAG 840).
Fot. Wikimedia Commons

sold in 1929 (and subsequently demolished), the painting was purchased by the dealer
David Croal Thomson at Christie's in London, on 17th May 1928 (lot 72). In 1953 the
portrait was purchased by F.D. Lycett Green at Agnew's in London; in 1955 Lycett Green
gave it through the National Art Collections Fund to the then City Art Gallery in
York.3 The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1887,4 19535 and
1962,6 each time as by Cornelis de Vos.
YORAG 840 depicts a woman, probably in her early twenties, in an extended half-length
composition (rather close to three-quarter length). She is slightly turned to the right, but

3 Francis Dennis Lycett Green (1893-1959) was a scion of the wealthy Green family, industrialists and benefactors
originally from Wakefield (his uncle, Frank Green, presented the Treasurer's House, York, to the National Trust in
1930). He began buying pictures during the 1920s, advised by some of the leading dealers of the day. By the 1940s he
owned examples from almost every school and period of European art - a comprehensive collection of over 130 paint-
ings dating from the early fourteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. In 1952 he offered this to the National
Gallery of South Africa, having moved to Cape Town in the hope that the climate would improve his health (impaired by
serious injury in the First World War). However, when a dispute arose with the Cape Town Gallery, Lycett Green
withdrew his pictures in protest and shipped them back to England. The entire collection of 137 pictures was first on
loan to the York Art Gallery and in the spring of 1955 he decided to give it to the Gallery. His gift was made through the
then National Art-Collections Fund, now the Art Fund. This note on F.D. Lycett Green is based on the information from
York Art Gallery files.

4 The Old Masters and the Deceased Masters of British School, Royal Academy exhib. cat., London 1887, no. 74.

5 Flemish art, 1300-1700. Winter exhibition 1953-4, Royal Academy exhib. cat., London 1953, no. 251.

6 Primitives to Picasso, Royal Academy exhib. cat., London 1962, no. 126.