3-067-879 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Gwendoline Syrie Maud Wellcome, c1900s. Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s who popularised rooms decorated entirely in white. She was the daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the Barnardo's charity for destitute children, and his wife, Sarah Louise "Syrie" Elmslie. She married pharmaceutical entrepreneur and collector Henry Wellcome, but the marriage was unhappy, and she later had a child by the author William Somerset Maugham.