Raymond McIntyre’s confident, modern look in this self-portrait reflects his growing reputation as an artist and his conviction that “one’s only chance is to be oneself”. By 1912 he had completed his studies under William Nicholson and Walter Sickert and given up on trying to get his work accepted for the Royal Academy of Arts – the institution at the forefront of England’s conservative art establishment. He wrote to his father:

There is no doubt that official (or Royal!!) recognition of Art has a very deadening effect. The R.A. [Royal Academy] is not in touch with the really significant things that are happening in the world of Art. The old order must pass, though. Well bother the R.A. anyway – away! – begone!

McIntyre instead gravitated to the more contemporary New England Art Club and the London Group, which were both spearheading modern developments in British art at the time. Throughout the 1910s he exhibited alongside leading contemporary artists including Christopher Nevinson, Jacob Epstein and Paul Nash.

(Raymond McIntyre: A Modernist View, 25 October 2025 – 8 March 2026)

Raymond McIntyre wrote candidly to his father in 1913 after a visit by several artists to his London studio, describing his approach to composing his portraits from this period:

I have invented her type. Though all the things I do are like her – yet it is the particular points about her which interest me and which I accentuate – and bring out – and I leave the parts that do not help. One [visitor] said what lovely hair she had. Now in this particular picture the hair was pitch black – and she hasn’t black hair at all. Whatever the scheme is, I vary the hair to suit it. [The visitors] were all very interested in my work – and genuinely so, which made me feel glad, because it corroborated my own idea that I was not deceiving myself. You see, one may get keen on someone, and be thinking more of her as her (or she?) than of the work. I am very much alive to this – and sentimentalism is so very inimical to good art. This sort of thing I can immediately detect in other people’s work. That is why I admire Botticelli and Holbein so, there is in their work such an aloofness.

(Raymond McIntyre: A Modernist View, 25 October 2025 – 8 March 2026)

“The girl who is sitting for me a lot now, [Phyllis] Constance Cavendish […] has a very refined interesting pale face – and I have done some very good work from her – paintings and drawings. And she is so conscientious and sits so well – she is quite a find. It’s people in the theatrical profession that I am always coming into closer contact with. I think I know more of them than any other persons.” —Raymond McIntyre, letter to his brother Arthur, 1912

(Raymond McIntyre: A Modernist View, 25 October 2025 – 8 March 2026)