THE DEGAS & THE SPHINX: for me one of the fascinating things about artworks in museums is not just what they represent and how they fit into wider art history, but the back story of who owned them and how. This Impressionist drawing by Edgar Degas ‘Femme se peignant’ c.1887-90 is one of the stars of ‘Degas to Picasso: International Modern Masters’ which opens at @pallanthousegallery today. It was in private ownership until it came to us in 2016 through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme from the estate of Stephen Brod. It once belonged to the American socialite Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough - the subject of a new biography by @hugovickers entitled ‘The Sphinx’ (after a statue of her at Blenheim Palace, which also has her distinctive eyes painted on the soffit of a portico - see pics here.) She was an art lover and painted by Giovanni Boldini and Sargent, and was friends with the sculptor Rodin, the painter Claude Monet and the novelist Marcel Proust, who confessed to a friend: ‘I never saw a girl with so much beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm.’ We assumed she had bought the drawing in 1918 from the sale of Degas’ collection by the dealer Durand-Ruel. But in fact Hugo recently found a will which revealed it was bequeathed to her in 1927 by her close friend the American lawyer and tennis champion Walter Berry, together with a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Gauguin and $20,000. She had attended the sale with Berry and they were clearly very close (he was also declared by novelist Edith Wharton to be the love of her life). Interestingly the Degas can be seen hanging in a photo of her London home Marlborough House (which features Lytton Strachey and Chips Channon). There’s so much to say about Gladys: that her father shot her mother’s lover, her rivalry with Consuelo Vanderbilt, her botched facelift that left paraffin wax slipping down her face, and her ending up in an asylum - but best to read Hugo’s book! #edgardegas #gladysdeacon #blenheimpalace #hugovickers #degastopicasso @blenheimpalace @claudia_rosencrantz (at Pallant House Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/CIaQISfF7tZ/?igshid=1t31taeo38u0l