This informal painting of about 1929 is of the airwoman, society beauty and heiress Wanda Holden, then described in the press as ‘one of the most admired débutantes of the last season’, with a ’vivacious personality’, who ‘is as clever she is charming’. She was not much older than 18, with black hair and brown eyes, when she married the MP for Bath (and ex Eton head boy) Charles Baillie-Hamilton, who had been Stanley Baldwin’s private secretary. She was constantly in the newspapers and magazines, and frequently photographed. Cecil Beaton’s photograph Soap Bubbles (1928), with Wanda, Baba Beaton (the photographer’s sister) and Lady Bridget Poulett, was included in Beaton’s Book of Beauty (1933); her portrait was taken by Lafayette Studios in 1929.

Her mother was Marion Munro, a New Zealand society beauty, and her stepfather was Major Norman Holden OBE, a wealthy stockbroker and financier, the son of the Liberal politician Sir Edward Holden. Both parents were keen aviators. Major Holden received his pilot’s licence in 1930, and had his own private airfield at Selsey, with a fleet of six aeroplanes. The Holdens were the first people in the UK to entertain Amy Johnson on her return to England after her solo flight to Australia in 1930. Wanda, too, was a keen aviator, flying to Bath for the Festival of Contemporary Arts in 1930, being ‘particularly interested in modern art’ as the Bath Chronicle put it. Nevinson’s friendship with her father Major Holden began ‘when I asked permission to pitch my caravan on his aerodrome at Norton Priory …. it was such a pleasure to meet a man with a real knowledge of what was going on, a gift for being able to explain the most intricate problems which are the fundamental cause of the chaos of the world today, and an uncanny intuition in the affairs of men.’

Nevinson soon began to paint Wanda, and this sketch captures her arch beauty exactly. Later, in 1935, he exhibited a portrait of her in his solo exhibition in Cooling Galleries, posing on the family airfield at Selsey with an aeroplane in the sky behind her. It was very well received, and Nevinson thought that ‘as a consequence, a new road seemed to open up for me and I have since then had many requests for portraits.’ Nevinson wrote in his autobiography, Paint and Prejudice, that Major Holden ‘was chiefly responsible for making [the exhibition] a success. Its first week had been ruined by the General Election, which had descended on us after all the arrangements had been made, so he gave the portrait [of Wanda] a party. It was one of the most remarkable parties ever held in Bond Street. There were the new M.P.s, lords and ladies gay, great scientists, doctors, actors, actresses, writers, critics, connoisseurs, and millionaires. I would like to pay a tribute to Coolings for the way they stood up to it .… things went well, and I sold three-quarters of my work.’ After an affair with the actor John Loder, Wanda was divorced from Baillie-Hamilton in 1932. In 1936 she married the First World War Flying ace Frank Soden (DFC and Bar), and in 1941 she joined the WAAF, becoming a Leading Aircraftwoman. In 1942 the Holdens’ airfield and family home were requisitioned by the RAF. The Sodens moved to Kenya after the war, where Wanda died.