111367

UNTRACED

Mrs Newbold Noyes, née Alexandra Ewing 1921

Half-length, slightly left and looking full face to the viewer, wearing a fur edged gown with a stole round her shoulders and a pearl necklace

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1921. may

Juley Negative PPJ-0058590

Sitter’s Book II, f. 21: Alexandra E. Noyes – Washington. May 12th. 21 

Private Collection

De László visited America from April to August 1921. Typically, he stayed for several months as this enabled him to complete a substantial number of portraits. During this time he painted some thirty sitters, including the sitter’s sister Ellen [111366], re-establishing his reputation after his internment during the First World War. The proceeds from these commissions helped him to buy his home at 3 Fitzjohn’s Avenue in London. There he built a studio in the garden, which allowed him to work at home after so many years in rented spaces.

Alexandra Cochran Ewing was born 8 October 1897 in Yonkers, New York, the eldest of the seven children of Thomas Ewing IV (1862-1942) and his wife Anna Phillips Cochran (1872-1943). In 1914 she spent the early summer in Europe before making her debut in society in December from her parent’s home in Washington, D.C.^[1] 

On 27 November 1915 the sitter married Newbold Noyes (1892-1942), son of Mr and Mrs Frank B. Noyes, whose family had an interest in the Washington Evening Star. They had three sons: Newbold Jr (born 1918), Crosby (born 1921), and Thomas Ewing. They divorced in 1934 and in December of that year she married her sister Ellen’s widower, Thomas Archibald Stone (1900-1965). The marriage took place in Paris, where Thomas Stone was serving as Second Secretary at the Canadian Embassy. The couple had a daughter whom they named Ellen.

In 1935 Stone resigned from the Canadian diplomatic service and the couple bought Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, Charleston County, South Carolina. He returned to the diplomatic service in 1939 and the sitter travelled with her husband, acting as diplomatic hostess, while he served with the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa for four years and then with the temporary mission to Britain and North Africa. He was elected Chairman of the United Nations Administrative and Budgetary Committee (1951) and served as Ambassador to The Netherlands (1952-1958) and Mexico (1958-1959). He retired from diplomatic service in 1959 and the couple settled in New York.

The sitter died on 26 October 1961, aged 66.^[2] In 1962 her husband married for a third time, to Mrs Emily Coolidge Woodruff; he died in 1965.^[3]

LITERATURE:

• “Art and Artists”, The Washington Post, 15 May 1921

MD & KF 2019