Richard von Marientreu was born in Poland and attended military academies in Cracow and Vienna before leaving for Prague, where he studied at the Academy of Painting. In London from 1933, von Marientreu was introduced into fashionable society by his patron, Mrs Marie Ludlow-Symonds. He was soon in demand as a portrait painter, many of his subjects coming from high-ranking sections of the military and society, including royalty. Between 1935 and 1955, he created portraits of sitters such as King George V; Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother; and Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery. He also exhibited regularly throughout this period, often with large scale genre paintings dealing with subjects such as mythology, war and historical scenes. His obituary in The Times recalled him as ‘a very gentle man, and immaculately turned out, choosing always to paint, no matter what the subject, in one of the same Savile Row tailored suits that he might wear to one of his exhibition openings’.
