Glyn Philpot RA (1884-1937) was a British painter and sculptor, best known for his portraits of contemporary figures such as Siegfried Sassoon and Vladimir Rosing. Philpot studied at the Lambeth School of Art (now known as City and Guilds of London Art School) in 1900 where he was taught by Philip Connard, and at the Académie Julian in Paris.

Henry Thomas had met Glyn Philpot's godson in the National Gallery after he had missed his voyage to Jamaica. He became Philpot's companion and was the artist's model in all his paintings and sculptures of black men from 1932.

Philpot was a co-founder of the National Portrait Society. As a gay man he sometimes felt a need to be away from the constraints of British society and travelled widely through the 1920s, in Europe, America and North Africa.

In Pittsburgh he met Matisse, a fellow juror on the Carnegie International Exhibition which awarded the prize to Picasso. He developed an overtly Modernist style that led the Scotsman newspaper to declare "Philpot goes Picasso!". His art fuses Symbolist elongated figures with an Expressionist angularity, as seen in this portrait.