Eighty years ago, shortly after D-Day, the sublime artist Rex Whistler died in Normandy, on 18th July 1944, aged 39. He was killed when he heroically left his tank to help his comrades.
Today, he lies in the war grave at Banneville-laCampagne War Cemetery, six miles outside Caen.
Still, 80 years after his death, his reputation lives on, not least in a new book, Rex Whistler: The Artist and His Patrons by Nikki Frater. A companion Whistler show is on at the Salisbury Museum (until September 29).
Among the pictures in this charming book is Ave Silvae Dornii - Latin for ‘Hail Dorney Woods’, painted in 1928 (pictured, right).
It was commissioned for Lord Courtauld-Thomson (1865-1954) the industrialist and arts patron, who lived at Dorneywood. In 1947, Courtauld-Thomson gave the
