The first, which is titled ‘Lady Hester Stanhope in Malta’, may have been painted from life, apparently shortly after Hester arrived in Malta where she and Michael Bruce stayed over the spring months of 1810 as guests of the island’s Governor, Major-General Sir Hildebrand Oakes. The artist is unknown, the picture, frame and style are typical of the early nineteenth century. Hester would then have been thirty-four. Now privately owned, it was purchased by auction in Malta.

The second, ‘A Girl in Eastern Costume on a Terrace with a Peacock’ by James Northcote RA (1746 – 1831) now hangs in the gallery at Stowe House, Buckingham, and over the years, and has always been regarded as being of Lady Hester, but whether painted from life or from the artist’s imaginative vision of her is not known.

Both portraits share several features which are consistent with the earlier portrait as well as ‘Lady Stanhope as Hebe,’ namely the very dark hair, worn loose and quite simply, the pale skin, rounded cheeks and arms, her very definite gaze and look of poised intensity.

Lee Miller has always been an inspirational figure to me, and I was particularly taken with Picasso’s cubist portrait of her, which Penrose says he allegedly greeted with a delighted ‘Mama!’ when he first saw it as an infant, adding that he may have been crying out in fright at the splintered image rather than in recognition!

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Many who were drawn to the legend of Lady Hester Stanhope in later generations found the fact that she appeared to lead a man’s life in a woman’s body to be a potently sensual combination. As an adolescent growing up for a brief time in Corunna, Picasso had stumbled on the grave of the man who might have married her, Sir John Moore. Devouring one of the early biographies about her, he read that even as blood welled up in his mouth, the brave man had choked out her name. In Paris, Picasso told his friend, the photographer Lee Miller, that he found the idea of Hester Stanhope exciting and erotic, that she had been “the very model of the free woman.” According to Miller, “he had been enthralled about by books of her adventures and life with the Bedouin, but instead of wanting to follow her footsteps in the desert, he dreamed of meeting in England someone like her.” In fact, Picasso often remarked upon what he saw as the striking similarities in the Englishwoman’s character and charisma to that of the iconic Miller, beautifully photogenic and adventurous herself, for the journeys she had made into the Egyptian desert – and especially to remote Siwa – on photographic expeditions, just before the Second World War broke out.

I urge anyone with an interest in the life and work of Lee Miller – fashion model, Surrealist muse, photographer, war correspondent and gourmet cook – to make the trip to West Dean, near Chichester, to see Lee Miller: Coinage of the Mind, from 13 September – 2 November at the Sussex Barn Gallery, West Dean College.