Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron Methuen

Paul Ayshford Methuen was born at Corsham, Wiltshire, on 29 September 1886. He was the first of the five children of Field Marshal Paul Sanford Methuen, 3rd Baron Methuen of Corsham, and his second wife, Mary Ethel née Sanford. He was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he studied zoology and engineering.

From 1910 to 1914 he worked in the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, where he published several scientific papers with the South African herpetologist, John Hewitt, with whom he collected and described a number of southern African and Madagascan genera and species in the early 20th century. He later refused a chair in zoology at a South African university because of his commitment to his ancestral home.[1]

In the First World War he served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and then with his father's regiment, the Scots Guards. Afterwards he worked at Ministry of Agriculture (where his experience in slaughterhouses made him a lifelong vegetarian) until succeeding his father in 1932. He married Eleanor Hennessy, daughter of the landscape painter William James Hennessy, in 1915.

Methuen had studied drawing at Eton, at the Ruskin in Oxford, and with Charles Holmes. In 1927 he attended art classes given by Walter Sickert, which had a permanent effect on his painting style. He established a reputation as a serious artist. His preferred subjects were urban views and outdoor scenes with buildings, animals, and plants, such as the magnolias and orchids he grew at Corsham Court.[2]

In 1939 he rejoined his regiment and served as a captain until 1944 when he was moved to the Procurement and Fine Art branch set up to protect works of art during the invasion of the continent. He later recounted his experiences in his book Normandy Diary. During the War, Methuen also received a number of commissions from the War Artists' Advisory Committee, mainly for scenes painted in the London dockyards.[3]

Methuen spent much of his later years in restoration work on his family seat, Corsham Court, and in restoring and expanding the art collection in its fine 18th-century Picture Gallery, designed by Capability Brown. Where possible, he bought back pictures that had been sold by his father. He published a history of the collection in 1958, and a catalogue of the miniatures in 1970.

Four years after the destruction of the premises of the Bath School of Art in 1942, Methuen offered Corsham Court, which during the war had been first the temporary home of Westonbirt School and then a convalescent hospital for officers, to the new Bath Academy of Art under Clifford Ellis. It remained there until 1972; Corsham Court is now used by Bath Spa University.[4]

From 1939 to 1971, Methuen was president of the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol.[5] He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1951, and became a Royal Academician in 1959.[6] He was also elected an Honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (Hon ARIBA) in 1947[7] and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1951.[8] He was a trustee of both the National Gallery, from 1938 to 1945, and of the Tate Gallery, from 1940 to 1945.

Paul Ayshford Methuen died on 7 January 1974 in Bath. His only son having died at birth, the title passed to his younger brother Anthony.

A species of South African lizard, Lygodactylus methueni, is named in honor of Paul Ayshford Methuen.[9]