Paul Wengraf (1894 - 1978) was born in Vienna in 1894 into a family of art dealers. His circle included figures such as Gustaf Klimt, Sigmund Freud and Egon Schiele, who painted a number of portraits of Wengraf in 1917. When Germany annexed Austria, Wengraf sold his business and fled to England, arriving in 1938. In March 1939 he opened the Arcade Gallery in the Royal Arcade on Old Bond Street, and exhibited a range of work, including Netherlandish Mannerism and early Baroque to Neoclassicism and classical Greek and Roman Sculpture. In May 1946, the gallery exhibited the work of Jamini Roy, and later held exhibitions of Classical
Indian miniatures.

Wengraf kept the Arcade Gallery open throughout the War, exhibiting even at the height of the Blitz. He also published a series of Gallery Books: small monographs devoted to individual pictures, featuring contributions by some of the most illustrious members of London’s art scene, including Kenneth Clark, Anthony Blunt and Douglas Cooper.

How Wengraf came to own a work by Souza is not known, however exhibitions of Classical Indian material in the 1950 and 60s could suggest that they were aware of one another. Certainly, by 1957 Souza was mixing with influential figures in London and could w ell have visited Wengraf ’s gallery.

Information taken from Cherith Summers, Brave New Visions: The Emigres who Transformed the British Art World,
London, 2019