Nick Willing

It was not, my grandfather told my mother, it was not a country for women.

It was not a country that treated women fairly or regarded women well.

in any way at all, really.

So he was an Anglophile.

He had worked for the British Secret Service during the war, even though he was in Portugal, which was a neutral country.

He helped Britain.

He had studied in Britain at Marconi.

He spoke English fluently.

And so he knew that England was a much fairer, at that time, much fairer country for women.

So he said, you should go to England.

He sent her to finishing school when she was 16.

And then when she wanted to go to art school, he let her.

He was quite an extraordinary man for a Portuguese man of that time because he believed that women were equal.

I know that sounds ridiculous to think that that was a thing now.

But in Portugal, they were not equal.

And he wanted her to thrive, encouraged her to do whatever she wanted to do, which in itself was extraordinary.

And then when she chose to be a painter, he knew that she was talented.

Seeing her work as a little girl, he knew that she could do it.

So he encouraged it and supported it.

uh financially and that was very important because she ended up with another artist and the two of them were broker than a broke thing he helped fund them until he died in 1966 then they were cut loose and on their own they had to make their own way and that was difficult