Sir Edwin Lutyens was born in London in 1869. He studied as a pupil under Ernest George until he established his own practice. Shortly after establishing his practice he met Gertrude Jekyll who collaborated on the landscape portion of many of his subsequent commissions and through her social connections, helped Lutyens accumulate many more commissions. Best known for his romantic country houses and designs for New Delhi (1913–1930), Lutyens also designed a number of war memorials including the Cenotaph (1919). His ambitious designs for Liverpool's Roman Catholic cathedral were never completed. Knighted in 1918, received the Gold Medal of the RIBA in 1921 and was made President of the Royal Academy in 1938. The posthumous portrait by his son, depicting Lutyens in the mid-1930s, was painted because the artist felt every other portrait made his father look 'over-serious'.