New exhibition reveals Picasso's love affair with English style In one photograph, Picasso, then 37, is seated with Diaghilev and Polunin, dressed in the quintessentially English outfit of a three-piece suit, watch chain and brogues, his hair neatly greased into a side parting. Another picture shows the artist with his wife Olga Khokhlova, a dancer with the Ballet Russes, in Leicester Square. Picasso is again dressed in a three-piece suit, accessorised with a bowler style hat, pipe and cane. Chris Stephens, the curator of modern British art and head of displays at Tate Britain, said: "Picasso developed a fascination with "Englishness" during his visit in 1919. He asked his friend, the art critic and curator Clive Bell to take him on shopping trips to Savile Row and the East End, where he would buy suits, watch chains and bowler hats, which began his lifelong love affair with British style. Though Picasso visited Britain only twice, in 1919 and again in 1950 to attend a peace conference in Sheffield, he continued to expand his collection of bowler hats and British-made clothes. Picasso's father, Jose Ruiz Blaso, an artist and art teacher, was also said to be such an Anglophile that he was nicknamed "El Ingles." His taste for English furniture and clothes is believed to have influenced Picasso, who in 1915 painted Man in a Bowler Hat Seated in an Armchair. The exhibition will also include a rare, previously unseen portrait by Picasso of Polunin. The drawing, a gift from Picasso to his colleague dedicated with the words "Pour V. Polunin, Picasso, London 1919," has been in the Polunin family's possession ever since. Mr Stephens added: "Unseen works by Picasso are very unusual so it is exciting to be able to include such a work showing a direct link with his time in London. The exhibition will show how Picasso evolved from an artist championed by a courageous minority in Britain, to become the figurehead of modern art both here and around the world. Picasso and Modern British Art which opens next month will examine Picasso's evolving reputation here and his impact on British artists. His paintings will be hung alongside works by artists he inspired, including Francis Bacon, whose Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion, 1944, will be compared with Picasso's works based on figures on the beach at Dinard in Brittany, which are said to have first inspired Bacon to take up painting seriously. Works by Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney will also be on display. The latter is said to have visited Picasso's major Tate retrospective in 1960 eight times and a selection of Hockney's homages to Picasso will be shown. The exhibition will feature more than 150 works from major public and private collections around the wold, including 60 by Picasso. Highlights will include Head of a Man with Moustache, 1912, a key cubist work, Man with a Clarinet, 1911-12, and The Three Dancers, 1925. The show will also explore Picasso's emergence in Britain as both a controversial figure and a celebrity who drew members of the Royal Family to his shows. During his early career, several leading cultural figures were contemptuous of his work, which many critics considered too modern and abstract. The author G.K. Chesterton described his 1911 painting Mandolin and Glass of Pernod, as "a piece of paper on which Mr Picasso has had the misfortune to upset the ink and tried to dry it with is boots." In 1945, following the opening of a show of Picasso's works at the V&A museum in London, Evelyn Waugh wrote: "Senr Picasso's painting cannot be intelligently discussed in the terms used of the civilised masters ... He can only be treated as crooners are treated by their devotees. By 1960, however, Picasso had won round most of his detractors, and his 1960 retrospective show at the Tate attracted more than 460,000 visitors, breaking all previous records. One critic described the exhibition as "the most vigorous, entertaining, interesting merry-go-round of art that London has ever seen," and in a letter to Picasso, the artist and biographer Roland Penrose, the show's curator, wrote: "the Picasso explosion ... is overwhelming. There are queues the entire day until eight o'clock in the evening when the gallery closes. You have conquered London - people are enchanted and dazzled by your presence on the walls. The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Margaret also visited the sow, with the Queen describing Picasso's work as "delightful." Following a private tour, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother declared Picasso "the greatest of our time."