Rex Whistler was an artist who worked on both a great and a small canvas. On the large scale, are his set designs and grand murals, on which his reputation rightly rests. But I want to focus in today on his smaller creations, for he often left fantastic drawings sketched on the back of whatever was to hand – hotel notepaper, old menus and letters.
Many such letters were sent to the girl in the yellow dress, above – Caroline Paget – for whom Whistler had an unrequited passion. Before he was tragically killed on his first day of action in the Second World War he sent her a declaration of love on a piece of cardboard cut from a camembert box.
He wanted her to remember him.
Now, in these days of Commemoration, I remember him.
