"William Bruce Ellis Ranken was born in Edinburgh in 1881, the second son of Robert Burt Ranken, a prosperous lawyer, and his wife Mary. He was educated at Eton and The Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks. He had his first one man exhibition at the Carfax Gallery, London in 1904, a gallery much favoured by Sargent at that time. Moving in the circles of Edwardian aesthetes, it is known that he was well acquainted with Sargent by 1908 and Wilfrid Gabriel de Glehn. By 1914 he was living at 14 Cheltenham Terrace, Chelsea, a couple of minutes walk away from Sargent's studio in Tite Street. Unable to serve in the First World War due the effects of childhood polio, he subsequently went to America on a commission thr...