Julian Lethbridge

Lethbridge was a banker from 1969 to 1972, when he moved to New York City to embark upon a career as a painter and drawer.^[2] Through his relationship with the American artist Jennifer Bartlett, he met Jasper Johns, who "became a kind of mentor" to him, and due to their closeness, many incorrectly assumed that they were lovers.^[4]

By 1988, his work was exhibited at the Julian Pretto Gallery, and he was the recipient of the Francis J. Greenburger Award.^[2] A year later, in 1989, his work was exhibited at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and the Daniel Weinberg Gallery in San Francisco.^[2]

His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[5][6][3] the Whitney Museum of American Art,^[7] the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.,^[2] the Art Institute of Chicago,^[8] and the Tate Britain in London.^[9][10]

In the 1970s, he had a relationship with the American artist Jennifer Bartlett, nine years his senior.^[4] After Bartlett left him, he had relationships with the photographer Mary Ellen Mark, the feminist Germaine Greer, and the French novelist Katherine Pancol.^[4]

Lethbridge lives in Manhattan and Connecticut and with until her death in 2020 Anne Hendricks Bass. They were together from the mid-1990s until 2020.^[4]

They were taken hostage on her Connecticut estate in 2007. Five years later, in 2012, their butler was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempted extortion.^[11]