The ATG has already been very helpful in this regard. Back in 2003 it kindly published an article which led us to the discovery of a painting by Bukovac in Liverpool.
In 2005/6 we had an exhibition entitled Searching for Blaise: Vlaho Bukovac and his Northern Patrons, held first at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, then at the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate and finally at Bonhams in London.
The painting that we found following your article in 2003 was of the wife of Richard LeDoux, Laura, and was shown at these exhibitions.
Now, one of the main galleries in Zagreb, Klovicevi Dvori, is preparing a major exhibition on Bukovac, under the title Bukovac in Europe, covering three major periods of the artist’s life.
Many paintings from the collections of Samson Fox and Richard LeDoux are still untraced. They are all listed by Alex Kidson, a Walker Art Gallery curator, in the British Art Journal, Vol 6, No 3, Winter 2005.
The exhibition opening in Zagreb on December 14 and covering the English period of the life of Bukovac has prompted me to try once again to jog people’s memories and locate some of these untraced paintings. In particular, we are sure a very large painting called The White Slave, which used to be in the collection of Samson Fox, is still in this country.
I am also looking for the portrait of Louise Bagshawe, daughter of Samson Fox, who, as her son George F Bagshawe told me in 1991, could be “somewhere in Brighton, rolled up in a drawer”.
Jadranka Beresford-Peirse
Founder and Trustee
The International Trust for Croatian Monuments
