Earlier in the year I bought this large framed and glassed print in an Ossett scrap store for one whole pound.
I was somehow drawn to the sitter's severely pale complexion and white garb set against her jet black hair, all with the pastelly chair and background.
She immediately reminded me of someone.
I had seen another painting of a classical lady just last year at the Cromwell Museum, where Elizabeth Cromwell, the Lady Protectress hangs, together with the actual pendant she wears in the picture.
But it's not her I'm thinking of.
For some reason Seventies singer Carole Bayer Sager, of Moving Out Today fame, sprang to mind. More whites and black locks.
But alas, it's not Carole.
There is an actress I've seen recently, but I cannot for the life of me think where, so I'll stick with my first choice.
Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles starring Cushing and Lee, 1959.
My initial thought revolved around Judi Moyens from the opening scenes in her only film appearance, apart from the cover a 1950's Picturegoer magazine about horror films which I have.
The Peter Cushing Appreciation Society celebrated these two roles on their superb site with this explanatory panel of theirs from 2006.
It's not Miss. Moyens though.
Closer to the mark could be the second actress in the Hammer film, namely the excellent Marla Landi (now aged 93) brilliantly playing the unhappy Cecile Stapleton, for whom the new Sir Henry Baskerville falls madly in love.
But, despite all this, I have to say it's a more modern release I've been heading towards and just realized fully.
It's the fantastic The Hound of the Baskervilles TV Movie with Richard Roxburgh and Ian Hart from 2002 that I believe that I'm thinking of and the actress within who I feel echoes the pale lady in my new painting:
Neve Mcintosh playing the the beleaguered Beryl Stapleton.
By jove, I think I have it! It is indeed Neve I'm thinking of.
The real sitter in the painting was Gertrude Vernon, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1864-1932).
It was painted by the American John Singer Sargent and appears to have been sold for a tidy sum by Bonhams in 2006.
Needless to say mine's just a print!
Do you have an intriguing picture readers?
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