William Samuel Henry Llewellyn was born on 1 December 1858 at Cirencester in Gloucestershire. He studied under Edward Poynter at the Royal College of Art and in Paris. Llewellyn painted portraits and landscapes and taught at the Lambeth School of Art, where Arthur Rackham was one of his pupils. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884 and was a member of the New English Art Club in the period 1887-89. He was elected ARA in 1912, knighted in 1918 and elected RA in 1920. He succeeded Sir Frank Dicksee as President of the RA in 1928, beating William Orpen in the final ballot. Llewellyn’s tenure would be highly eventful. It has been said that he was of little distinction as an artist, but compensated for this with other virtues, ‘being tall and handsome in person, with a pleasant, lively manner, and the valuable gifts of quick observation, social tact, frank speech, and sense of humour’. These qualities helped him to supervise the arrangements for a series of loan exhibitions at Burlington House devoted to Dutch, French, and Persian art. The most famous was the ‘Italian Art 1200-1900’ exhibition of 1930, which contained many famous masterpieces and was mounted with the enthusiastic assistance of the facist dictator, Benito Mussolini. There were 78 loans from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence including The Birth of Venus by Botticelli and 21 from the Academia in Venice including the Tempesta by Giorgione. Some 600,000 visitors came to see the exhibition that would be described by Sidney Hutchinson in his History of the Royal Academy (1968) as ‘absolutely staggering in its content of world-famous masterpieces.’ In the 1920s relations between the RA and the Tate Gallery deteriorated and Llewellyn had to deal with the consequences of the Tate’s childish policy of refusing to hang works purchased for the nation under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest, if it adjudged them unsuitable. In 1934 Sir William convened and chaired a Constable Memorial Committee to determine how best to mark the centenary of the death of the painter John Constable (1 April 1937). It was proposed that the Dean and Chapter of St Pauls’ Cathedral be approached with the proposal to place a memorial tablet to his memory in the crypt. It was further decided to launch an appeal early in 1935, by means of a letter to The Times to establish a John Constable Prize for the encouragement of landscape painting by artists of British nationality. The sculptor Jacob Epstein’s first major commission was the 18 figures he produced in the period 1907-08 for the exterior of Charles Holden’s British Medical Association building in The Strand (now Zimbabwe House). The English were not ready for Epstein and the anatomically accurate figures he produced were condemned as obscene, leading to a long-running, ill-tempered debate in the press. In May 1935 Sir William instructed RA Secretary Walter Lamb to write to the BBC, correcting statements that had been made on the radio on 19 May concerning his refusal to sign a letter to The Times calling for the preservation of the statues. Walter Sickert (elected full academician only the previous year) resigned from the RA over the self-same issue. (The figures were mutilated in 1937 having become: ‘a danger to the public’). Also in 1935, Stanley Spencer resigned his associateship, when two of his paintings were rejected by the Hanging Committee of the RA Summer Exhibition (he would not not return to the fold until 1950). Interviewed by the gentlemen of the press in 1936, Sir William is recorded as saying: ‘Sorry as I am to say it, to my mind, the fate of picture making is sealed. I can see no future. Already there are too many pictures in the world. . . .  The life of the art student is made too easy. … In my young days the way was hard, but those who really believed in their art were content to struggle. It is not fair to youth to be so encouraging. People today are not picture-minded. Houses are smaller, decorative schemes have no use for pictures, and those who do love pictures can satisfy their love in so many of the galleries, which are free. It is a pity but true that anyone can do without a picture.’ As befitted his position as grand panjandrum of the arts, Sir William was the recipient of many foreign orders and honours. These included: Commander of the Legion of Honour, Grand Cross of the Crown of Italy and Grand Officer of the Order of Orange Nassau. As a mark of royal favour, he was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Victorian Order by his sovereign in 1931. He also served as a Trustee of the National Gallery in the period 1933-40. In 1938 Sir William stood down from the presidency of the RA, having reached, so it was believed, the statutory retirement age of 75; in fact he was five years older, his date of birth having long been given inaccurately. Sir William died in London on 28 January 1941 and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. His 1911 and 1914 oil on canvas portraits of Queen Mary may both be found in the Royal Collection.