Gerald Festus Kelly was born in London on 9 April 1879. His sister, Rose Edith Kelly, was briefly married to the serial nutcase and occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Gerald was educated at Cambridge University, later living and studying art in Paris under the Canadian Impressionist painter James Wilson Morrice (1865-1924). Whistler was one of his early influences. Kelly was an enthusiastic traveller, visiting among other countries Spain, America and South Africa. He spent the years 1908-09 in Burma, painting small landscapes and producing some of his most characteristic and charming figure studies. Kelly’s paintings of Oriental dancers soon became familiar to the public through popular prints – at one time they were amongst the most popular reproductions in Britain. Somerset Maugham would write: ‘his Burmese dancers … have a strange impenetrability, their gestures are enigmatic and yet significant, they are charming, and yet there is something curiously hieratic in their manner; with a sure instinct, and with a more definite feeling for decoration than is possible in a portrait, Mr Kelly has given us the character of the East as we of our generation see it,’ (Somerset Maugham, ‘A Student of Character’, International Studio, December 1914). Kelly would later recall: ‘I had seen some snapshots of Burmese dancers, and so, with the sublime spontaneous stupidity of youth, I just went off to Burma. How lucky, how wonderfully lucky, I was.’ (Sir Gerald Kelly, Exhibition of Burmese Paintings,1962, Preface). In 1920 Kelly married Lilian Ryan, a young artist’s model, who first sat for him in 1916. Kelly re-named his wife ‘Jane’ and painted her portrait no fewer than 50 times in varying guises and poses throughout his career. He exhibited a portrait of her nearly every year at the Royal Academy with the simple title ‘Jane’ and roman numerals corresponding to the year that the painting was first exhibited at the RA. He settled at 65 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London. Other of his sitters included T S Eliot and Somerset Maugham, whom he painted several times. Maugham, his lifelong friend, wrote an introduction to a catalogue (1950) of an exhibition of Kelly’s work. Maugham regularly depicted Kelly in his works, as Lionel Hillier in Cakes and Ale, as Frederick Lawson in Of Human Bondage and as O’Malley in His Excellency presenting him as ‘the young Irish painter called O’Malley’ and dedicated his book Ashenden to him. Kelly’s oil painting D D (1924) is an erotic depiction of a ginger-haired nude female. It got its title from the initials of the unknown lady who modelled for it. The portrait was purchased by a public gallery in 1947 and more than 20,000 people queued to see it when it was exhibited. However, council chiefs in Newport, South Wales, decided that the painting was scandalising their town and ordered it to be taken down. The ‘Newport Nude’ then spent many years locked in a vault until July 2008, when she went on public show again and drew instant condemnation from a new generation of puritans for the fact that the model was depicted smoking a cigarette. Kelly became a favourite painter of the Royal Family and examples of his work may be found in the Royal Collection. He was elected ARA in 1922 and RA in 1930. His Diploma Work was Jane XXX (1930; above). He was the Academy’s Keeper in the period 1943-45 and was also member of the Royal Fine Arts Commission in the period 1938-43, being knighted in 1945. Kelly succeeded Sir Alfred Munnings as President of the Royal Academy in 1949. In that role, he devoted much of his time to organising loan exhibitions and became well-known for his appearances on the BBC. His popularity helped to revitalise the Academy’s image, after the damage done to it by his predecessor and his would be a busy presidency. In 1935 Stanley Spencer’s painting St Francis and the Birds, was rejected by the RA’s hanging committee. Spencer, understandably, resigned. In 1950 Kelly persuaded him to return to the RA. However, that development greatly displeased Munnings, who got hold of one of Spencer’s erotic paintings and several of his explicit erotic drawings by masquerading as a potential purchaser. He then had the works photographed, showed the photographs to the police and wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, urging him to take action against Spencer for obscenity. Sir Gerald learned of these developments and quickly moved to see the DPP, to scotch Munnings’s plan. He subsequently put an end to his activities. The RA’s Minutes for 31 October 1950 read: ‘The president read extracts from newspapers dated between 1st and 21st October showing that Sir Alfred Munnings had sought to defame the character and art of Mr Stanley Spencer by showing certain unexhibited paintings to members of a London club and the police. It was agreed that it was highly reprehensible that a Member of the Academy should attack another in this way, and that the President would personally assure Mr Spencer of the Council’s regret for the occurrence and their readiness to assist him if further attacks of the kind were made on him.’ In the summer of 1953 Kelly dealt with a tricky item of business. He became aware of the likelihood of a motion being tabled by an MP in the House of Commons for the withdrawal of the RA’s Royal Warrant, or royal patronage, in view of its retrograde influence. He wrote on 17 July to W S Morrison, Speaker of the House, stating that he could not brief anyone to argue the case for the RA and the monarch had always been a proud protector, patron and supporter of the RA. He also wrote to Viscount Simmonds, the Lord Chancellor, who replied a few days later that he did not think that the impertinent person who proposed the withdrawal from the RA of the Royal Warrant or royal patronage would be able to get the Motion on its legs, because it was a rule of that House, that matters should not be discussed for which no minister had responsibility; and no minister had responsibility for the RA. The painter Walter Sickert died unreconciled to the RA in 1942. He had been a key figure in the most terrific row in 1935 over Jacob Epstein’s external sculpture for the BMA Building in the Strand. Sickert had resigned from the RA over Sir William Llewellyn’s refusal to support Epstein. In 1955 Kelly put down the name of Sickert’s widow for a Cousins or Turner Annuity, after she had been left penniless. Kelly felt that it was a shame not to help the widow of so good a painter, even though he did resign ‘rather scurvily’. Several members of Council did not like Sickert’s work and could not forgive his resignation. As there were many applicants, the archive of the RA demonstrates that he moved heaven and earth to get his way. Sir Gerald had retrospective exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries in 1950 and in 1957 at the RA. His work is represented in many public collections, including the Tate Gallery, which holds his Boulevard Montparnasse (1904); Alex and Demary Dancing in a Music Hall at Algiers (1906); Terrace at Monte Carlo (1908); Beach at Etretât (1908) Ma Si Gyaw, Pose IV (1909-14); The Vicar in his Study (1912) and The Jester (W Somerset Maugham) (1911). The latter was not a commission, but was painted for exhibition and sale, with the rising reputation of Maugham as a bonus. Kelly had just taken smart rooms off Lowndes Square in Belgravia, and chose to emphasise the correct poise of his sitter, wearing morning dress and grey top hat. The two men were the same age, were both Irish, and had been friends in Paris. Kelly painted Maugham many times through his life, often depicting him in character: the title of the portrait refers to Maugham’s renowned wit. The portrait served as an advertisement for Kelly’s practice, and pointedly contrasted with the bohemianism of his rivals William Orpen and Augustus John. Sir Gerald stepped down from the RA in 1954 and retired. He died at Exmouth in Devon on 5 January 1972. His biography For Love of Painting: The Life of Sir Gerald Kelly KCVO PRA by Derek Hudson was published in 1975. The Studio Sale of his work took place on 8 February 1980 at Christie’s in London. Sir Oswald Birley’s 1920 oil on canvas portrait of Kelly may be found in the Primary Collection of the National Portrait Gallery. A quantity of his private correspondence may be found in the collection of the University of Glasgow. Between 1909 and 1970 Sir Gerald exhibited over 300 works at the RA. During his lifetime, his work became well known through popular prints. Since his death however – and in spite of his technical brilliance and colourful, wide-ranging subject matter – his reputation has stagnated.