Dorothy Hepworth was born in 1898. She met the artist Patricia Preece at the Slade in 1917. Professor Henry Tonks had a high opinion of Hepworth’s work and Preece was praised by Roger Fry, Clive Bell and Duncan Grant. With parental help, the two women set up a home/studio together in an apartment in Gower Street, and moved to Paris to study in 1921, with Hepworth going to Colarossi’s studio and Preece to the more experimental André L’hôte. The two women returned to England in 1925 and became part of the Bloomsbury circle. As artists, their principal subject was the human figure, often presented with an intimate and domestic feeling. Hepworth was diffident, retiring, and mannish in her style of dress. In contrast, Preece was fashionable, attractive, and sociable. Although they signed all of their paintings with Patricia Preece’s name, it seems likely that Hepworth produced most of the art. Because of Hepworth’s diffidence, Preece dealt with the public and with art galleries and dealers. The couple had some fear of being known as lesbians and oftentimes, claimed to be sisters. Preece was known to refer to herself as ‘née Hepworth’. In 1927, for Hepworth’s health, they settled in Cookham on Thames, Berkshire, a country village where, with Hepworth’s father’s assistance, they purchased a cottage named ‘Moor Hatch’. He sent monthly cheques to supplement the women’s slight income; however, his death in November 1930 revealed that he had lost his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. Hepworth’s mother struggled to assist, but Hepworth and Preece found it increasingly difficult to fund their appetite for whisky and cigarettes, never mind the mortgage, which fell into arrears. In 1929 Hepworth and Preece met Stanley Spencer, a painter who had also studied at the Slade and who lived with his wife and two daughters in Cookham. In the early 1930s, the threat of repossession was making Preece ill and a solution occurred to her in the form of her neighbour Spencer, who had conceived the notion of taking the two lesbians into his own home, much against the better judgement of his wife, the artist Hilda Carline. Spencer developed an obsession with Preece, who frequently modelled for him nude. He went into debt by giving her money, clothing, and jewellery. His wife became increasingly depressed, as she realised that she was losing her husband and fled to her family home in Hampstead. She separated from him in 1934 and divorced him in 1937. Spencer then married Preece, but when he attempted to consummate the marriage, she immediately fled to Hepworth. Although Spencer and Preece never lived together as man and wife, they never divorced. Hepworth and Preece’s work received major attention between the two World Wars. Exhibiting under Preece’s name, they showed at Dorothy Warren’s gallery, London, in 1928. In 1936, they exhibited at the Lefevre Gallery, London, with a catalogue introduced by Duncan Grant. The catalogue for their 1938 exhibition at the Leger Galleries, London, was introduced by Clive Bell, Virginia Woolf’s brother-in-law. Two of their major shows took place the year before and the year after Preece married Spencer in 1937. Following this flurry of activity, the women virtually disappeared from the art scene, though Hepworth lived 40 more years and Preece another 33. Hilda Carline died of breast cancer in 1950 and Spencer died in 1959. In 1991, a posthumous exhibition of Hepworth and Preece’s paintings and drawings was held at the Bloomsbury Workshop, London. Their art is almost unknown today, although an undated drawing of Preece by Hepworth was published in Emmanuel Cooper’s The Sexual Perspective (1974). Both women are known to history primarily because of Preece’s relationship with the far better-known Spencer. Although Preece is sometimes portrayed as a con-artist, taking advantage of a naive and infatuated artist, the truth of the matter is undoubtedly more complicated. Hepworth and Preece are of great significance to gay and lesbian art history because of their long-lasting relationship and because of the ways they used their personal strengths to create a public life together. Dorothy Hepworth died in 1978 and was buried with Patricia Preece, who predeceased her by seven years.