This portrait of the Artist’s Mother, Anne Carline (1862-1945), was painted shortly after Anne herself had taken up painting herself in 1927. Married to the artist, George Francis Carline (1855-1920), the couple settled in Hampstead and had five children of whom three. Richard (1896-1980), Sydney (1888-1929), and Hilda (1889-1950) all became artists. The family home, first at Downshire Hill and later on Pond Street was full of art and often visiting artists and writers. These included Henry Lamb, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, and John Nash, among others. An annual family painting holiday became a regular feature and it was on one such trip, to Assisi in 1920, that George Carline died suddenly. Encouraged by the artists she had met through her children and husband, Annie Carline took up painting. From 1927 she produced landscapes and figures, usually in watercolour. She exhibited with the London Group and the Artists’ International Association. The cubist painter Andre Lhote helped organise a solo exhibition of her work at the Galerie Pittoresque in Paris. Carline remained active as a painter until her death in 1945.

An earlier portrait of Anne Carline, painted by Hilda’s brother, Richard Carline, is part of the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.