b. 1902
Portrait of Lady Jan Verney

Oil on canvas, signed ‘ E S-T’ lower right, dated 1936 on verso
Image size: 12 1/2 x 16 3/4 inches (31.75 x 42.5 cm)
Original frame

£2,000

Literature
Referred to by the New Scientist magazine in October 1995.

Provenance
London’s Oriel Contemporary Art exhibition, 1995.

This is a bust-length portrait of Lady Jan Verney. Shown in a white blouse with black polka dots.

Elizabeth Stewart Jones was a synaesthetic painter who sparked British research into the condition. As stated in Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing by Simon Baron Cohen & John Harrison, the name Daniel, when spoken to the painter and synaesthete ‘is deep purple, blue and red, and is shiny” but the letter ‘H’ is also purple, while “U” is yellow’.

Lady Jan Verney was the daughter of Herbert Musgrave and Georgiana Hopkins. She married to Sir John Verney, 2nd Baronet of Eaton Square on March 29 1939 in London. Sir John Verney was a writer, illustrator and painter and also fought in the Second World War where he was mentioned in dispatches twice. During World War II, she lived for a time in the United States with her young son, Julian, who later died in 1948 at the age of 8. She and John had 6 more children after the war and moved to London. She was an antique dealer. She died in July 2014.