Since Fifty: Men and Memories, 1922-1938; Recollections of William Rothenstein

London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1939. First U.K. Edition [stated]. Presumed First Printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. This is the third volume of Rothenstein's memoirs. VOLUME III ONLY. xv, [1], 346, [4] pages. Frontis illustration. Illustrations (36 pages of plates reproduced in collotype. Index. DJ worn, soiled, tears, and heavily chipped. Contents is largely uncut. Sir William Rothenstein (29 January 1872-14 February 1945) was an English painter, printmaker, draughtsman and writer on art. He is best known for his work as a war artist in both World Wars and as a portrait artist. More than 200 of his portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery collection. Rothenstein was knighted in 1931. He was encouraged by James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. He became a close friend of the caricaturist and parodist Max Beerbohm, who later immortalized him in the short story Enoch Soames (1919). Rothenstein is best known for being an official war artist in both World War I and World War II. The National Portrait Gallery owns over two hundred of his portraits. The period covered in this volume is that during which Sir William Rothenstein was Principal of the Royal College of Art, and it is natural, and fortunate, that the book should contain his ripe reflections upon contemporary painting and literature. He writes also about the most delightful feature of any man's life, his friends. And what friends these particular friends are! He write again, and most absorbingly, about country craftsmen and country life, in Gloucestershire especially. The volume ends with a retrospective glance at his own career, both as an artist and as an observer of life and manners.