He (McWilliam) has never denied himself the pleasure of drawing from life and his portrait busts show clearly his rare talent for making accurate and sensitive representations of nature.   Roland Penrose

During December the portrait maquette of Olga Davenport has been on display in the Studio.   Nicholas Davenport is Portrait of the Month for January.

Ernest H. Davenport (pseud. Nicholas) was born in 1895 the youngest of a family of three sons and one daughter.  His father Thomas William Davenport, a brewer and Anglican lay preacher, married Florence Elizabeth Lowe; he unfortunately died when Nicholas was twelve years old.
Nicholas was educated at Cheltenham College where he proved to be an all round scholar and athlete going on to Queen’s College, Oxford where he gained a First Class Honours Degree in Modern History.
During the 1920’s Davenport embarked on a career in the City which led to financial journalism and involved him in public debate about the future of the capitalist system.   Often sharing the convictions of two eminent economists, Maynard Keynes and Hubert Henderson, his writings were widely published with reports in The Times and Manchester Guardian; later he was City columnist for the New Statesman from 1930-1953.  Not confined to newspaper columns Davenport was also author of five books the first Parliament and Taxpayer was published in 1918; a sociologist as well as an economist he was well qualified to write about social conflict as seen in his play And So to Wed published in book form and approved of by George Bernard Shaw.
During the Second World War Nicholas Davenport was Public Relations Officer with the Board of Trade for the Clothes Rationing Scheme and after the war became a member of the National Investment Council under Hugh Dalton and first member of the National Film Finance Corporation under Harold Wilson.
Davenport recalls in chapter five of his book,  Memoirs of a City Radical  the summer of 1933 when he discovered and bought Hinton Manor, the Norman Honour of St Valery, around ten miles from Oxford. Although a seemingly rash thing to do because the repair and upkeep of the large place would be demanding nevertheless he was tempted with the low price caused by the slump of the 30’s.  Davenport’s imagination was fired by the long fascinating history of the Manor and so began the restoration of the beautiful house. His love of Hinton Manor was shared by his beloved wife Olga and many friends and acquaintances from the world of politics and the arts were invited to visit and stay. Throughout his life Nicholas Davenport remained a man with a social conscience who relished debate, weekends at Hinton must have been lively indeed.  He continued as a journalist and economic advisor until his death in 1979.
As I discovered while researching Olga’s portrait maquette the Davenports were great friends of Mac and Beth McWilliam and also of William and Mary Scott.

 Roland Penrose, Mc William (London 1964)
  Nicholas Davenport, Memoirs of a City Radical (Weidenfeld & Nicholas, 1974)
  ‘Ibid’
  ‘Ibid’

Millie Moore
January 2012