After the First World War, in which Newton had briefly served, he returned to London from Cornwall where he had been living in the artists’ colony in Lamorna and immediately began to exhibit his work at the Royal Academy. The artist was known as the ‘Canaletto of the canals’, owing to his esteemed depictions of London’s waterways but was also a coveted ‘portrait’ painter of peoples’ homes and was renowned for his earnest naturalistic style. He specialised in urban landscapes and this example is typical of his portrayals of London streets.

This painting was featured in a show at the Royal Academy in 1936, the same year Newton became an associate Royal Academician, earning full RA status a few years later. It seems unlikely to be a coincidence that the first house on the left is 25 Downshire Hill, the home of his daughter Pauline’s brother and sister-in-law, Stephen and Margaret Murray, who lived there from 1930. Stephen was the youngest son of Lady Mary Murray (née Howard) and Professor Gilbert Murray OM. The Carline family lived at no.47 and their house became a meeting place for artists, including Hilda Carline and her husband Stanley Spencer, who lived there in the 1920s. Algernon Newton’s daughter, Joy, was later to become a regular visitor to no.21 where Roland Penrose, whose brother Beakus she married early in 1937, lived from 1936 onwards. Roland Penrose, who formed the British Surrealist Group in 1935, and his wife Lee Miller were close friends of Picasso, Man Ray and André Breton among others.