In London of 1890, 26-year-old Blanche Lilian Galsworthy lived in 8 Cambridge Gate with her parents John and Blanche and her siblings: 23-year-old John, 21-year-old Hubert and 19-year-old Mabel Edith (Figure 1.1). One day, Lilian’s friend Frances Knight-Bruce visited the home accompanied by a handsome 24-year-old Bavarian painter named Georg Sauter. He had recently arrived in the city through the generosity of a patron of his promising artistic career begun at the Royal Academy and developed through work in various parts of Europe, including Holland, Belgium, France and Italy.

Frances had seen Georg in the National Gallery sketching Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne and was “struck by the excellence of the copy he was making.” She “opened conversation with him” and “soon became strongly impressed by his talent” and his determination “to stand on his own two feet and half-starved perhaps, but wholly indomitable [in his] fight for recognition in London.” Frances became interested to find him paid work, so she brought him to the Galsworthy’s home, hoping that the elder Galsworthy might let him paint his portrait.

The household into which Georg entered was “very ‘Victorian’ “ and likely had a “devastating effect […] on his art-loving eyes and soul,” beginning with “the vast conventional drawing-room [which] must have been a shock.” Therein, he saw “carpet and curtains […] of crimson velvet […] Buhl cabinets, white marble, consol-tables, gilt-edged mirrors, Dresden china ornaments, a Collard grand piano and water-colours by popular Royal Academicians.” At the same time, Georg likely made his hosts as “uncomfortable” as he felt in their orderly Victorian home, as he was