Milein Cosman was born on 31 March 1921 and during her long life produced a wide-ranging and prolific body of work. Never without her sketchbook, she drew everything and everyone around her. Particularly remarkable was her ability to capture character in movement, and her many portraits of performing artists created a pictorial ‘Who’s Who’ of the cultural elite of the second half of the twentieth century.

She worked in a broad range of media, from drawings and prints to paintings and sculpture, but she was best known for her unique rapid drawing technique that enabled her to capture the most fleeting of moments.