Item Description

Cecil Jameson was born in Christchurch in 1884, and studied in Wellington under J M Nairn and Francis Hodgkins. In 1904 he went to England, becoming a student at the Royal Academy Schools. He was a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy, Paris Salon, and the Glasgow Institute, and watercolours at the New English Arts Club.

Cecil Jameson was both an accomplished portraitist and landscape painter. Many of his portraits can be viewed at the Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Royal College of Music and the Government Art Collection.

This pencil portrait is of Sir Anthony Palmer 4th Baronet of Grinkle Park in the county of York and New Castle-under-Tyne in 1921 aged six years.

Sir Anthony was reported missing in action on 18th June 1941 in the Eastern Mediterranean during Operation Boatswain. This was an SOE action to destroy oil refineries at Tripoli in Vichy held Lebanon.

Also missing in action with Sir Anthony were twenty-three Palestinian Jews.

A memorial was held for Sir Anthony Palmer and the lost Jewish agents in 2019 at the Israeli AKKO Marine Cadet School.

Princess Elizabeth stood godfather to Sir Mark Palmer 5th Bt. and son of Sir Anthony, born in 1941.