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Gillian Jason at the art gallery she founded under her own name in 1982The art dealer Gillian Jason combined
the elfin grace of the ballet dancer she
had once been with a clear head for
business, fierce determination and a
sense of humour that was not always
apparent at first meeting.
When, in 1996, she opened a West
End gallery in partnership with Benja-
min Rhodes, friends drew a strip car-
toon titled “Jason and the Arguenots”.
In the first frames Rhodes listed the art-
ists whom he favoured for their opening
show; in the last she responded, “No. It
will be Ansel Krut”, and indeed the en-
tire show was devoted to the South Af-
rican painter.
Jason had opened a gallery under her
own name in 1982 and was a vital and
formative force in the art world for
more than 40 years. She was renowned
for her astute ability to broker a deal
and her willingness to take a risk on
new talent. She operated from her
family home beside Primrose Hill, close
to Camden Town, whose schools of
modern British artists she had champi-
oned before it was fully fashionable to
do so.
She had a particular aptitude for the
delicate diplomacy and marketing
required in dealing with deceased art-
ists’ estates, to ensure the best for their
reputations as well as for their families.
Among the estates that she handled
were those of David Bomberg, Henry
Lamb and Eric Gill. As important was
her work with following generations of
artists, whose potential she was quick to
spot. Notable among those she repre-
sented were the painters Frank Auer-
bach, Leon Kossoff and Adrian Berg.
Terry Frost became a good friend, and
he wrote out and illustrated one of Lor-
ca’s Sonnets of Dark Love for her, a gift
that she kept for the rest of her life.
She always championed female art-
ists, for instance bringing Bomberg’s
wife, Lillian Holt, to equal prominence
with him, and supplying the first of her
study, Neville Jason (obituary, Novem-
ber 26, 2015), whom she married in 1961.
They were on stage together again in
1965, under the baton of Georg Solti at
the Royal Opera House as Israelites in
the chorus of Schoenberg’s master-
piece Moses und Aron. Solti’s wife, the
former BBC television presenter Valer-
ie Pitts, found them “full of life and new
ideas” and became a lifelong friend.Neville Jason was born Jacobson, a
grandson of one of the original share-
holders in Marks & Spencer. He adopt-
ed his mother’s stage name from her
time as a professional singer. The Ja-
sons became a glamorous fixture of bo-
hemian Sixties society. Gillian retired
from ballet in 1966 and trained as an op-
era singer before setting up her own
gallery. Neville, after a distinguishedcareer on stage, film and television,
notably in Maigret and Dr Who, became
a fine adapter and reader of audio-
books. His triumph was a complete ren-
dering of Proust’s À la recherche du
temps perdu. He also encouraged his
wife’s increasing engagement with the
visual arts. In 1976 she joined the
Campbell & Franks Gallery in New
Cavendish Street.
The couple had two children, Elli,
who worked in film and television
before joining her mother at the gallery,
and Alex, who became a lighting engi-
neer. They recalled the oddity of grow-
ing up in a house where a picture that
they had liked on the wall at breakfast
would often be gone by supper time.
The gallery-cum-home was a lively
hub, where many unknown artists were
given a platform to exhibit their work.
Jason was a staunch supporter of her
artists and despite the steel in her char-
acter, her hallmark was kindness. Ac-
cording to Gay Hutson, the organiser of
the 20th Century British Art Fair, she
could be a “pretty fearsome presence
on the advisory committee, but when
we needed help, she was always there”.
Her diplomatic skills were also help-
ful at the time of the 1992 closure of Fis-
cher Fine Art, a leading contemporary
gallery in St James’s, central London.
She was able to add several important
artists to her list on the strength of her
reputation.
The sculptor Michael Sandle, who
was one of those artists, was much
impressed by her “English rose looks,
with a hint of steely resolve”. It was, he
said, “abundantly clear that you were
dealing with a sophisticated woman
who was a lot more intelligent than
many of her competitors in the London
art world”.Gillian Jason, art dealer, was born on
June 30, 1941. She died after a brain
haemorrhage on July 21, 2020, aged 79the road and into the woods. He was
educated at Bracondale School for
Boys, in Norwich, then Fakenham
Grammar School.
With his older brother Dennis,
Gerald started trapping and recording
moths, a project that won him the
Prince Philip award for zoology and led
to a place at Imperial College London to
study zoology. It was there that he met
his future wife, Caroline, a law student.
They married in 1972 and had three
children, Robert and Richard, who be-
came engineers, and Rachel, a solicitor.
All survive him.
Roger Short, working at the
veterinary school at Cambridge, had
read about Lincoln’s moth project in theworks to be bought by the Tate. In later
years she built up an impressive private
collection of the work of Eileen Agar,
Marlow Moss, Bridget Riley and
Elisabeth Frink, among others. Her
passion for nurturing and supporting
female artists has become the main
focus of the gallery under the steward-
ship of her daughter, Elli, and grand-
daughter, Millie.
Gillian Brett Bosworth was born at
Moddershall, Staffordshire, in 1941, the
daughter of Francis Bosworth and his
wife, Joan (née Wood). The family were
from Sheringham in Norfolk, but had
been evacuated from the coast. Her
father played little part in her life and
she had a matriarchal upbringing,
largely overseen by her maternal
grandmother, a significant influence on
her character.
Aged four she was sent as a boarder to
a convent school, which she loathed, al-
though the nuns recognised and en-
couraged her unusual dancing ability
and set her on the path to her firstcareer. Later, when the family moved to
Roehampton, she was given the choice
of turning left at the gate to go to the
local school or right to the Royal Ballet
School. She turned right, and aged 14
was awarded a scholarship.
Over the next ten years she took part
in numerous Royal Ballet performan-
ces, and in 1957 acted and danced the
part of Cobweb in Michael Benthall’s
production of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream at the Old Vic in London. Frank-
ie Howerd was Bottom, Coral Browne
was Helena and Judi Dench the First
Fairy. More important to Gillian, how-
ever, was Oberon’s uncredited under-A painting on her wall
at breakfast would often
be sold by supper time
Gillian Jason
Pioneering gallery owner whose willingness to take a risk on new talent made her a formative force in the art world for 40 years
Gerald Lincoln
Quirky endocrinologist who weighed his beard shavings and discovered that thinking about sex increases testosterone levels
For the deer on the Isle of Rum it was
mating season, but for Gerald Lincoln
the nights were lonely. He was on the
island to study their breeding cycle, and
would not see his girlfriend for weeks at
a time. As the chance to see her ap-
proached, Lincoln noticed something
strange. His face stubble seemed to
grow faster. To check that this was the
case, he decided to weigh his shavings
every morning, and indeed they were
heavier by the day. From this he de-
duced something remarkable: that the
level of testosterone, which determines
the pace of beard growth, must be con-
trolled by the cerebrum, the part of the
brain from which complex thoughts
emerge. The more he thought about his
girlfriend, the higher his testosterone
rose and the faster his beard grew.
He wrote a paper about it, which the
prestigious scientific journal Nature
agreed to publish. Highly unusually, the
piece appeared anonymously, to spare
his mother from the knowledge that he
was having sex before marriage.
Gerald Lincoln was born in Norfolk
in 1945, the son of Gertrude (née
Holmes), a geography teacher, and
Ernest, a tenant farmer who died when
Gerald was six, forcing the family to
give up the farm. His mother and her
brother then bought a farm near
Reepham, where Gerald spent his
childhood years roaming the country-
side and marvelling at the birds and
especially the moths. He became an
adept poacher too, carrying lavatory
paper as an alibi when he ventured off
newspapers and invited him to join his
team to study for a PhD on the deer of
Rum. Lincoln’s work on the island led to
a clear understanding of the way in
which the breeding cycle of red deer,
including antler growth, is controlled
by the length of the days to ensure that
the hinds calve at the optimum time to
benefit from spring grass. The breeding
season in red deer is short and sharp; in
effect they undergo an annual puberty.
In 1974 Short became director of the
new Medical Research Council (MRC)
Unit of Reproductive Biology in Edin-
burgh and Lincoln was offered a role
there. With a year to spare before he
was due to take up the post, he, Caro-
line, and some friends decided to drive
a Land Rover to Komodo island in In-
donesia to see the dragons. Travelling
between islands on a small boat, they
were becalmed for several days, though
they eventually punted to shore by
moonlight. They only stayed on the is-
land for two weeks before beginning
the daunting drive home.
On a subsequent trip to Australia he
had acute leukaemia diagnosed and
was flown to the Royal Infirmary of Ed-
inburgh with a prognosis of only a few
weeks. However, pioneering treatment
was astonishingly successful and he
went into remission for more than 40
years.
His work at the MRC unit involved
keeping soay rams in artificial daylight.
From this, he was able to elucidate the
mechanism by which mammals work
out whether it is night or day viachanges in melatonin acting at the level
of the pituitary gland, just below the
brain. The pituitary reads the length of
the nights, short in summer and long in
winter, creating two states of body and
mind, one for summer and one for
winter.
By measuring the frequency with
which his rams hit their heads against
the sides of the pens he created an index
of “irritability” and demonstrated that,
counterintuitively, this increased as
testosterone levels fell. From this he
postulated a “male irritability
syndrome”, pointing out that grumpi-
ness in men coincides with the decline
in testosterone with age. The theory
attracted the attention of the tabloids
and procured Lincoln an invitation on
to the Toda y programme. When a be-
fuddled John Humphrys tried to ex-
plain his theory back to him, saying that
testosterone increased irritation, Lin-
coln hooted and said, “No, no, you’ve
got it all wrong”.
He received numerous scientific
awards and medals for his work, was
elected a fellow of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh and was appointed as emer-
itus professor of biological timing at
Edinburgh University.
Throughout their time at Edinburgh,
Lincoln and his family lived at Kirkton
Cottages, Auchtertool, in Fife. When
they arrived the land around the
cottages was overgrazed grassland,
empty of biodiversity, but they trans-
formed it into a thriving nature reserve.
In retirement Lincoln was able todevote himself to this project, hiring no
assistance for all the manual work it in-
volved. He encouraged many visitors
to this private reserve, infecting them
with his passionate and cheerful
enthusiasm.
He constructed a sand martin colony,
which each year bred more than 400
fledglings, attracted a breeding pair of
mute swans to his ponds and crucially
recorded moths all over Scotland.
Moths provide a means of measuring
environmental change and Lincoln
came to see very clearly the gravity of
the damage to the environment. As he
wrote: “The alarm bells have gone off;
industrial farming and the encroach-
ment of towns is trashing the country-
side. Gone are the butterflies and the
wild flowers. A crisis.”
The return of his leukaemia was
rapid. He chose to have palliative care
at home, where he was visited by
friends. He read a book about rewilding,
and wrote a few pages of recollections
for his family, which ended: “Back
home in Fife, my lifecycle has run a full
circle, from learning to love nature in
my teens to a career in science and
medicine, and then to retirement back
to my passion — a perfect life sur-
rounded by friends.”Gerald Lincoln, endocrinologist and
naturalist, was born on April 29, 1945. He
died of cancer on July 15, 2020, aged 75Lincoln’s first passion was for moths[email protected]