Allan Douglas Davidson | An English Yum-Yum, 1906

"An English Yum-Yum: my lady lights the sombre day: A scene from The Mikado", signed and dated 'Allan Davidson 1906', belongs to a tradition going back to Whistler's Japanese subjects of the 1860s and '70s, by way of paintings inspired by visits to Japan by Whistler's pupil Mortimer Menpes (1887), Alfred East (1889) and the two 'Glasgow Boys', George Henry and E.A. Hornel (1893-4).

The picture's title is taken from Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy opera The Mikado, first staged in March 1885. | Source: © Christie's

Allan Douglas Davidson (1873-1932) was born at Marylebone, London, son of Thomas Davidson and his wife Charlotte Douglas née McHeath.

He studied at St. John’s Wood School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, being awarded a silver and bronze medals, and at L'Academie Julian, Paris.

Figure and portrait painter and a teacher at London County Council, Central School of Arts and Crafts.

He married at Hampstead in 1903, Kate Beryl Skeffington and in 1911, a 37 year old artist living at 9 Lyndale Avenue, Childs Hill, Hendon, London with his 30 year old wife Beryl, born Kensington and their 1 year old son Roland, born Hampstead and retained a nurse and an indoor servant.

He exhibited two paintings of Walberswick windmills at the Royal Society of British Artists 'The Mill, Walberswick' in 1902 and 'The Marsh Mill' the following year, he also exhibited at the Royal Miniature Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in 1920, from London in 1892 and from Walberswick, Suffolk in 1925.

Elected to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1921 and was also a member of the Langham Sketching Club and painted a miniature for the Queen's Doll's House. He died at Walberswick on 19 April 1932, aged 55.

His wife Kate Beryl, born 23 November 1880, died at Bridge, Kent in 1973.