David - Full Length

At the age of fifteen years I was a tall, thin schoolboy. On a train journey to Paris after a visit to the Lascaux caves my mother said to my father that I looked like a Giacometti figure, and as they were going to see him in Paris, they should ask him to do some drawings of me. As a result, a couple of days later I was taken along to Giacometti’s shabby and cluttered studio by my parents and left there.

As an English schoolboy I was slightly alarmed at the thought of posing for a famous French artist, but he simply asked me to sit down in a chair while he silently made a number of drawings. After a couple of hours my parents came back and Giacometti had produced five beautiful drawings. My parents were delighted and said they would like to buy three of them. Giacometti, however, said that he couldn’t possibly sell them as they weren’t good enough. An inconclusive discussion then took place for the next twenty minutes until Giacometti’s girlfriend Annette came into the room, and it was revealed that what she wanted more than anything else in the world was a Marks & Spencer’s mackintosh.

As a result it was finally agreed that my parents would have the three drawings, and in payment they would give Annette an M&S mackintosh. The next time that they were in Paris, I am glad to say, they also gave Giacometti a small, beautiful, ancient Egyptian head they knew he would love.

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David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville