Lillian Browse Author

Lillian Browse was brought up in South Africa, and she returned to England in the mid 1920s to study ballet with Margaret Craske, joining the Dolin-Nemtchimova Ballet Company in 1930. She became ballet critic to the Spectator for four years in the early 1950s. She worked at the Leger Gallery from 1931 to 1939; then, during the war, she organized exhibitions at the National Gallery and for CEMA, the precursor of the Arts Council. She was a founder partner of the art gallery Roland, Browse and Delbanco in 1945, and also of Browse and Darby in 1977. It was Lillian Browse's neighbour Rex Nan Kivell, the founder of the Redfern Galley and a close friend, who christened her 'duchess of Cork Street'. She organized the Sickert centenary exhibition at the Tate in 1960, later exhibiting her own private collection at the Courtauld Instititute Galleries in 1983. Among her many books have been volumes on Augustus John's drawings, Sickert, Degas' dancers, William Nicholson (catalogue raisonne) and Forain's paintings.