110554

Sofía Santamarina Terrero 1921

Half-length in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a stole round her shoulders, a necklace and drop earrings

Oil on canvas, 80 x 55 cm (31 ½ x 21 ¾ in)

Inscribed lower left: de László / LONDON 1921 

Laib L10405 (507) / C24 (8)

NPG 1921-23 Album, p. 20

Sitters’ Book II, f. 27: Sophy Santamarina [beneath her mother’s signature: Sofia Terrero de Santamarina Octubre 21.1921]  

Private Collection

Sofía Santamarina Terrero and her mother, Sofía Terrero de Santamarina [9948] were painted by de László in the autumn of 1921, a period during which he painted several members of the large Argentine Santamarina family: María Gastañaga de Santamarina [110552] and her daughter, Mercedes Santamarina [110553] and Elvira Santamarina de Lezica Alvear [110549]. Sittings for the present portrait and that of her mother took place in London between 15 and 31 October, while the others were completed in Paris in November.

Sofía Santamarina Terrero was born on 12 July 1904, in Buenos Aires, the only daughter of Enrique Santamarina Irasusta (1870-1937) and Sofía Terrero Peña [9948]. She had six brothers. The sitter’s grandfather, Ramón Santamarina Valcárcel (1827-1904) had had eighteen children by his two wives, and the financial empire that evolved from his pioneering activities in the New World founded one of the most powerful and influential families in Argentina.

On 19 September 1928, in Buenos Aires, she married Diego Francisco Bosch Alvear (born 1900), the son of Ernesto Bosch Peña and Elisa de Alvear Fernández Coronel. His younger sister, María Teresa Bosch Alvear de Dodero and her son Jorge were painted by de László in 1925 [3431]. Sofía Santamarina and her husband had three children, Diego Enrique (born 1929), Sofía (born 1931) and Marina.^[1] 

Diego Alvear died on 2 September 1936 in an accident at the 6 September Aerodrome in the Province of Buenos Aires. The aeroplane in which his cousin, Dr Samuel Bosch Marín, was practising night-time landings crash-landed on to Diego Alvear’s car.

Sofía Santamarina de Bosch survived her husband by 52 years, dying on 21 June 1988, aged eighty-three.

LITERATURE:  

•László, Philip de, 1921 appointment book, private collection

•Vogue South America, April 1922, p. 18, ill.

SMdeL 2012