†STEPHEN WARD (1912-1963) THE MISSING WITNESS signed

†STEPHEN WARD (1912-1963) THE MISSING WITNESS signed, oil on canvas, 60 x 42cmSeldom have the lives of painter and subject - Stephen Ward and Mariella Novotny the self styled 'Government Chief Whip' - simultaneously provoked unprecedented obloquy, their names inextricably linked to those of Profumo, Keeler and Rice-Davies.The present portrait's cryptic title is a reference to Novotny's hasty departure from the USA in 1961, after a year in which she had liaisons with both President Kennedy and his brother Robert, US Attorney General. Arrested and charged, she boarded the liner 'Queen Mary' and sailed for England under an assumed name.Ward's notoriety rests on his Old Bailey trial and its ending in his suicide. The one is generally regarded as a miscarriage of justice, the other was quite possibly murder.Mystery surrounds the pair's strongly rumoured connections with the security services on both sides of the Atlantic. Christine Keeler, a friend of Mariella Novotny (1942-1983) certainly believed that her death, also an apparent suicide, was in fact murder at the hands of British or American agents. In a suspicious burglary at her home a day or two later, any incriminating evidence from her colourful past that may have existed disappeared.