Major Raymond Smythies (1860-1939) was a commissioned officer in the Prince of Wales's Volunteers. He retired from the Army in 1903. His friend Haldane Macfall, another retired Army officer, sat to Henri Gaudier-Brzeska for a portrait bust early in 1912, and Macfall must have introduced Major Raymond Smythies to the sculptor. Major Raymond Smythies was pleased with the portrait head and paid £12 to have it cast into bronze. He gave his bronze cast to Manchester City Art Gallery in 1922; at Smythies's request, the bronze was shown in the Gaudier-Brzeska Memorial Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London in 1918 under the title ‘Head of a Military Officer’. The original plaster version which remained in the sculptor's possession, and then on his death in 1915 passed to Sophie Brzeska (1872-1925), his companion, is now at the Tate, purchased in 1930 from the intestate estate of the late Miss Sophie Brzeska through the Treasury Solicitor by C. Frank Stoop (1863-1933), who presented it to the Contemporary Art Society the same year.