Lytton OBE (Later 3rd Earl of Lytton) (Attributed to), Hon. Neville Stephen (1879 – 1851) – Sir Edward Marsh KCVO CB CMG (1872-1953)

Lytton OBE (Later 3rd Earl of Lytton) (Attributed to), Hon. Neville Stephen (1879 - 1851)

Sir Edward Marsh KCVO CB CMG (1872-1953) Oil on panel. c.1905. One of the great Patrons of the arts of the Twentieth Century, Marsh was also a brilliant civil servant. He was successively Assistant Private Secretary to Joseph Chamberlain while he was Colonial Secretary, Private Secretary to his successor Alfred Lyttleton, and then Private Secretary to Winston Churchill when he was Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. He remained Churchill's Private Secretary for the next ten years becoming Assistant Private Secretary to Prime Minister Asquith in 1915. In 1916 and he returned to service under Churchill until 1929. 21.75x18 inches. Framed: 29x25 inches.

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Eddie Marsh was a friend of Victor Lytton (the 2nd Earl) and through him met his younger brother Neville. Marsh and Neville shared lodgings in Paris in the Spring of 1898 and then at Gray's Inn Place in London, which Neville and his wife Judith (later Lady Wentworth) used as a pied-a-terre. Lytton was an enormous influence on Marsh's early artistic taste, introducing him to early English watercolours and convincing him to buy a Girtin in 1901. 'I had a longer look than ever before at his [Lytton's] favourite Gainsborough and for the first time felt its peculiar beauty - it's another instance of his being ways right. I wish I had his quickness and power of seeing things at the first go off, it literally takes me five or six minutes hard looking before I even begin to see the real beauty of a picture' [Eddie to Judiith).