Measuring 14 x 10in (35 x 25cm), it had a guide of just £150-250 at the June 12 sale in Shaftesbury, Dorset, but sold at £5800.
Worked in both pastel and watercolour, it is signed and dated 1906 – the year Greiffenhagen first taught at the Glasgow School of Art – with the subject named as Gilbert Maurice Parkinson. It came for sale from a member of the Haviland Parkinson family, a descendant of the sitter.
The subject was one Greiffenhagen painted on a number of occasions, most famously as part of the 1915 portrait The Sons of William Parkinson (Captain William Haviland Parkinson, 1891-1976 and Captain Gilbert Maurice Parkinson, 1896-1918) that now resides in The Fusiliers Museum of Northumberland.
After almost four years as a soldier in France and Italy, Gilbert was struck down in the influenza epidemic that ravaged Europe in the closing months of the First World War and died in Italy in 1918. After the death of both artist and sitter, the picture was exhibited at The Royal Academy of Arts Winter Exhibition in 1933 when it was titled simply Head of a Young Boy.
