Donald Chrisholm Towner:
Portrait of Charles Mahoney (1903-1968), 1926
Framed (ref: 4951)

Signed and dated 

Oil on canvas 

Tags: Donald Chrisholm Towner oil portraits 1.PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST Golden Generation RCA

Provenance: From the artist's personal collection.

Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.170.

Mahoney and Towner were fellow students at the RCA. Towner shows the 23 year old Mahoney seated in his studio. Perhaps deliberately, perhaps by chance, Mahoney's eye defect (Mahoney had lost the sight in his eye in a childhood accident) seems emphasized in this portrait sketch.

Tirzah Garwood recounts  several amusing anecdotes about Mahoney in Long Live Great Bardfield (Fleece Press):Charlie had a glass eye but I thought that on the whole it improved his appearance, giving an interesting and piratical look to a face that as nature intended it, might have belonged to a Sunday School superintendent or a postman' p. 100-101

Charles Mahoney at Pevensey circa 1958