Percy Horton:
Joan Jenner/Rhoades reading, circa 1925
Framed (ref: 4195)

Signed with studio stamp on reverse (2/26) 

Oil on canvas

Tags: Percy Horton oil portraits reading women 1.PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST 2.HORTON Golden Generation

Provenance: The Artist's Studio

Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.100.

Geoffrey Rhoades married Joan Jenner in the mid 1930's.   They met at a Royal College Ball. Although Geoffrey studied at the Slade (more prestigeous than the College at the time) one of his intimate friends, Percy Horton, was at the College. Geoffrey, Percy, his wife Lydia and Joan became very close friends until the end of their lives. Joan came from Lewes in Sussex, was very intelligent, only not experiencing university education because her divorced parents could not afford it. She made a distinguished career as a secretary, her final appointment being as secretary to the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford with Percy Horton as Ruskin Master. Geoffrey also taught there as has their son Peter who was born in 1938. Joan died in 2002, aged 97, in the house in Cuddington which she had shared with Geoffrey and subsequently with Peter, his wife his second wife Jane and their two children.