The White Lion Society has generously given the College of Arms a portrait of Philip Walter Kerr MVO FSA (1886-1941), who became Rouge Croix Pursuivant in 1928. The fourth son of Admiral Lord Walter Talbot Kerr, he was educated at the Oratory School, Edgbaston, and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After serving in the army in the First World War and in the Egyptian Civil Service from 1919-24, he died on active service as a Pilot-Officer (Intelligence) RAF at Shallufa in Egypt during the Second World War. He is dressed for the coronation of King George VI in 1937, in his tabard, and holding his staff ensigned with the Badge of Rouge Croix.
The artist was Charles Louis Geoffroy-Dechaume (1877-1944), a French Anglophile who can be identified from his monogram on the portrait. He lived in Sussex prior to 1914 but returned to France at the outbreak of the First World War and served in the 275th Regiment of Infantry, losing his left leg in 1914. He spent the Second World War at his house at Valmondois, north of Paris, where he was involved in the Resistance. His daughter Marie-France was also active, helping from 1941 to 1943 to rescue Allied pilots who had been shot down over France.