An understanding between Philpot and his sitter always helped him to produce his best portraits. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his two portraits of Lady Melchett. Since 1927 when she first sat to him she had not only purchased some of his work but also commissioned from him one of the most daring decorative schemes in London for her house. Successfully combining in his new manner elements of '30s neo-classicism and a certain Hollywood glamour, Philpot treads a fine line between the depiction of a bored socialite on a Mediterranean holiday and the reincarnation of one of Garbo's tragic heroines. The diaphanous image of Lady Melchett remains in the mind as one of the most haunting of its kind.(see Exhibition catalogue, Glyn Philpot 1884-1937: Edwardian Aesthete to Thirties Modernist, loc. cit.) (http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/glyn-warren-philpot,-r.a.-1884-1937-8-c-bv5baqdwlj)