Paul A. Methuen

The Lord Methuen
The Lord Methuen, by Walter Stoneman; bromide print, February 1938, National Portrait Gallery collection
Born	Paul Ayshford Methuen 29 September 1886 Corsham, Wiltshire, England
Died	7 January 1974 (1974-01-08) (aged 87) Bath, Somerset
Nationality	British
Spouse(s)	Eleanor Hennessy (died 1958)
Elected	1939–71 President, Royal West of England Academy 1947 Honorary Associate, Royal Institute of British Architects 1951 Fellow, Society of Antiquaries 1951 Associate, Royal Academy 1959 Royal Academician

Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron Methuen RA (29 September 1886 – 7 January 1974) was a painter, zoologist and landowner. He was the eldest child of the 3rd Baron Methuen and his second wife, Mary Ethel.

Paul Ayshford Methuen was born at Corsham, Wiltshire, on 29 September 1886. He was the first of the five children of Field Marshal Paul Sanford Methuen, 3rd Baron Methuen of Corsham, and his second wife, Mary Ethel née Sanford. He was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he studied zoology and engineering.

From 1910 to 1914 he worked in the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria, where he published several scientific papers with the South African herpetologist, John Hewitt, with whom he collected and described a number of southern African and Madagascan genera and species in the early 20th century. He later refused a chair in zoology at a South African university because of his commitment to his ancestral home.

In the First World War he served with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry and then with his father's regiment, the Scots Guards. Afterwards he worked at Ministry of Agriculture where his experience in slaughterhouses made him a lifelong vegetarian, until succeeding his father in 1932. He married Eleanor Hennessy, daughter of the landscape painter William James Hennessy, in 1915.