111742

Ogden Livingston Mills 1931

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 71: Ogden L. Mills  Dec. 25th ’31

This portrait was painted in late 1931, during the fourth of de László’s five visits to the United States. The first sitting took place on Christmas morning, but the artist cannot have been pleased with his first attempt, as the following morning he began a new, larger canvas. Further sittings took place 26-30 December, with another recorded on 5 January.^[1] 

The artist noted his progress on the portrait in his diary 28 December: “from 12- x till 1. ocl. mr Ogden Mills set for one hour – his attractive heard [sic] wife came too- & was happy over the pic. I like O. Mills a good clas[s] – man - ! His portrait goes in well – a sketch head – Lunchend at the Metropolitan club - & at 2 ocl – I had our second sitting for one hour – The light was good - & finished the head drawing of the body.”^[2]

De László painted the sitter’s wife in 1921, when she was Mrs John R. Fell [5053], his aunt, Mrs Whitlaw Reid [6799], her daughter, Lady Ward [3408] in 1922 and his grandsons John and Reginald Ward in 1927 [3412].

Ogden Livingston Mills was born 23 August 1884 in Newport, Rhode Island, son of Ogden Mills (1856-1929) and Ruth Livingston (1855-1920). His paternal grandfather, Darius Ogden Mills (1825-1910), made a fortune in banking, railroads and mining ventures on the Pacific Coast. The sitter graduated from Harvard University in 1904 and from Harvard Law School in 1907. He was admitted to the bar in New York and began practising law. From 1911 he was an active member of the Republican Party and was Treasurer of the Republican County Committee of New York. In 1912 he ran, unsuccessfully, for Congress, before being elected to the New York State Senate in 1914 and re-elected in 1916. In 1921 he was elected to the first of three terms in the US House of Representatives.

On the recommendation of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon [6418], President Calvin Coolidge [4169] appointed Mills Undersecretary of the Treasury in 1927. To Mills fell much of the responsibility for representing the Treasury Department before Congress. He continued as Under Secretary in President Herbert Hoover’s [5787] administration, during which the dominant issues were the post-First World War reconstruction of Europe and the German-American Debt Funding Agreement (1930), which arranged German payment to the United States for costs suffered by the American army and citizens during the First World War. Toward the end of his term Secretary Mellon spent much of his time overseas, and President Hoover relied heavily on Mills, who served as Acting Secretary during Mellon’s absence. Hoover promoted Mills to Secretary when Mellon vacated the position in 1932 to become American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. As Secretary, Mills continued the policies of his predecessor, recommending a drastic reduction in government spending and a tax increase, in order to balance the budget by 1934. Congress also imposed a general manufacturer's excise tax but neither of these policies helped alleviate the Depression. Mills resigned at the end of Hoover's term in 1933. He died 11 October 1937, in New York City.^[3]

On 20 September 1911 Mills married Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherford, step-daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt. They divorced in 1919. He then married Mrs. John Fell (née Dorothy Randolph) on 2 September 1924. There were no children of either marriage.

LITERATURE:

•DLA107-0003, press cutting, Washington, D.C., Star, 3 January 1932

•DLA162-0052, Pesti Hírlap, 3 May 1932, p. 6

•László, Philip de, 1931 diary, 25 December entry, p. 363; 26 December entry, p. 364; 27 December entry, p. 365; 28 December entry, p. 366; 29 December entry, p. 367; 30 December entry, p. 368; 5 January 1932 entry, p. 375

MD 2016