Signed l.r.: Reginald Brill and with a label in the artist’s hand (verso)

Tempera on panel, 12 by 18 ins (30.5 by 46 cm)

Provenance: acquired by the previous owner from the Phoenix Gallery, Lavenham

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1931, no.895

There is a label on the back of the present painting in Brill’s hand:

“Painted in Rome in 1929. The building in the background is the Villa Guilia as seen from the British School at Rome. On the right are two Italian Army officers in the uniform then worn.”

Young Woman in Rome is one of Brill’s very few surviving works painted during his time as a Rome Scholar in the late 1920s, having re-surfaced from a private collection nearly a decade ago. The sitter is probably Brill’s wife Rosalie who was also an artist and came out to Italy with him. The portrait is an extraordinary testament to Brill’s precocious talent as an artist and to the very particular style of winners of the Prix de Rome in the 1920s. Typical of works in this tradition, this portrait takes elements of fifteenth century Italian portraiture (particularly the work of Piero Della Francesca) and transforms it into a work that nevertheless could only have been painted in the early part of the twentieth century. The painting was the first work that Brill exhibited at the Royal Academy, two years later in 1931.