Saw Ohn Nyun V

Description / Expertise

Born in London and determined to be an artist, Kelly moved to Paris
where he befriended Sargent and Sickert, and met the Impressionists.
After a disastrous love affair with a dancer, he travelled to Burma
and became infatuated with an ideal of Eastern beauty, exotic
and mysterious. He finally met the personification of that dream
back in London, in the form of Saw-Ohn-Nyun, a Burmese princess
bored to tears with life in a diplomat’s family, far from home.
Cool and unearthly, she modelled for him every day for two months.
One of his paintings of her, not the best, became a famous print.