Valerie Beston

Miss Beston was known throughout the London art world as the person who loyally supported and nurtured many of the leading artists working in London during her extraordinary fifty-year career at the Marlborough Gallery. 

Marlborough began to represent Francis Bacon in 1958 and Miss Beston played an important role in both his professional and private lives. She organised everything—arranged for paintings to be collected from his studio, archived his work, supervised catalogues of Bacon exhibitions, organised his doctor’s appointments, paid bills and carried out other mundane chores for him. She regarded it as her duty to make sure that his life ran as smoothly as possible in order that he would be able to paint uninterrupted.