Lady Caroline Blackwood (1931–1996), an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, known for her wry macabre novels and essays, as well as for her high-profile marriages, first to Lucian Freud, then to composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to poet Robert Lowell, who described her as “a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers”.

Ann Fleming, wife of “James Bond” author Ian Fleming, introduced Lady Caroline to Lucian Freud, and the two eloped to Paris in 1952. She sat for several of Freud’s finest portraits, including Girl In Bed, Girl in a Green Dress and Girl Reading.