ALICE NEEL (1900-1984) was a born rebel. Early on in life, she escaped the strictures of her small Pennsylvanian home town which, she said, “was utterly beautiful in the spring but there was no-one to paint it.”

She had wanted to be an artist since childhood but as her family were not well off she felt obliged to take a secretarial course and studied art at night school while saving up for full-time study.

Once at art college, like many a good-looking and vivacious girl, she was soon seduced, married and pregnant. There followed many years of emotional highs and lows from an eventful love life.