Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are pleased to offer for sale this very well executed portrait oil on canvas by the artist Frank Aveline, who has signed the painting to the lower left hand corner F. Aveline and dated it 1920. The painting was probably commissioned by the family. This is a posthumous portrait of a very brave and dedicated soldier, who served his country throught WWI and who sadly died less than two months before Armistice Day.

The Artist:

Frank Aveline 1877-1951, was born in Kendal, Westmorland, the son of a civil servant, who retired to Somerset, where he was born and then moved the family to London. Frank exhibited one painting at the Royal Academy in 1905, at which time his address was 1 Bolton Studios, Redcliffe Road, South Kensington, London. He died in Fulham, London in 1951.

He is listed in the Dictionary of British Artists (Collectors' Club). He painted portraits, mostly portraits of ladies, from the Edwardian, through the 1920s and thirties, flappers and bathing beauties. Other than this, we have been unable to find any more information about his life or artistic studies.

The Subject:

Major Leonard Montague Greenwood DSO MC & Bar was born on 12th June 1893, the youngest son of a Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Greenwood and his wife Harriet. He was educated at Dulwich College from 1906 - 1910, after which he joined Deloitte, Plender, Griffiths & Co until 1914. He had been a prominent sportsman at Dulwich college playing rugby and cricket and for a short while in 1911 he was in the Caribbean, where he was twelfth man for British Guiana against the M.C.C.

As soon as war was declared in 1914, he enlisted in the Universities and Public Schools Brigade and in December 1914 he was granted a temporary comission in the Durham Light Infantry, 13th Battalion. In August 1915 he was sent to France, where he was promoted to Lieutenant the following year and Captain in February 1917 being at the front for an almost continuous period of nineteen months. In March 1917, he was awarded the Military Cross for 'consistent and keen devotion to duty for a period of 19 months in France without a break'. Later in that year he was awarded a bar to his M.C. in particular recognition of his efforts during fighting near Ypres at Dumbarton Lake in the 3rd Battle of Ypres, sometimes called the Battle of Menin Road, between the 20th and 22nd September.

In early 1918 he left France for the first time in nearly three years, but merely to go to Italy, where he fought in the battle of the Asiago Plateau. He was promoted again to the rank of Major. After leaving Italy, he was returned again to the Western Front where he was placed in charge of a battalion. On October 10th that year, near Le Cateau, he was leading an assault when they came under gas attack, where he was slightly gassed, but refused to leave his post until the operation was completed. For his bravery on this occasion, he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Order. After the gassing, he developed influenza which turned into broncho-pneumonia and, having refused to leave his post until it was too late, as they were very short of officers, he died shortly after arriving at the base hospital in Rouen on 17th October, 1918. He was mentioned in dispatches three times and was commended by his senior officers for his dedication to duty, one of whom said 'He is one of the best officers of his rank I have known during the war'. He was 25.

He is buried in the St. Sever Cemetery Extension, Rouen Reference S V H 9 maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. He is commemorated on Dulwich College War Memorial and by a plaque in the Leonard Memorial Hall in Croydon placed by his father. In the obituary placed by his parents it stated "His death was the first grief he occasioned to his parents".

The painting is framed in a 3" ornate, gilt, swept frame and will be supplied wired and ready to hang. It will be accompanied by a file of documentation about Major Greenwood and his life.

Image size: 23 3/8" x 19 1/2" - 59.4cm x 49.55cm

Frames size: 30 1/4" x 26 1/4" - 76.85cm x 66.65cm

Mediuim: Oils on unlined canvas

Condition: Very good. The surface is clean and taut with no repairs and there is minimal craquelure. The frame is new.