2633

Study portrait

Lieutenant The Honourable Francis Walter Stafford McLaren 1915

Half-length full face to the viewer, wearing a greatcoat over service dress and his left hand at his waist resting on his Sam Browne belt

Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 59.7 cm (35 ½ x 23 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P A de László / 1915. X.

Laib L7851(58) / C17(32)  

NPG Album 1913-15, p. 94

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 101: Francis S. McLaren / Nov 7th / 1915

Private Collection

This portrait is an example of the many portraits the artist completed of officers destined for the front or briefly home on leave during the First World War. Lieutenant McLaren was killed two years later, leaving a wife and two children; the youngest, Guy, was painted by de László [2640] in 1923. He also painted the sitter’s father, the first Baron Aberconway, in 1922 [2617], his mother in 1920 [2626], his elder brother Henry in 1917 [2624], and Henry’s son Charles in 1922 [2270]. Two copies were made of the present portrait, one in oil by Robert Fowler [111288]; one in watercolour attributed to him.

The Honourable Francis Walter Stafford McLaren was born 6 June 1886, the second son of the 1st Baron Aberconway and his wife Laura Elizabeth Pochin. The family also lived at Hilders in Shottermill, Surrey. The sitter was educated at Eton and graduated with a degree in Modern History from Balliol College, Oxford, where his nickname was ‘Macaulay McLaren’ after the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859). He was a member of the Oxford Union and took a prominent part in political discussions, championing the ideals of Free Trade. He became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Viscount Harcourt,^[1] Secretary of State for the Colonies, between 1910 and 1915, and was elected M.P. for the Spalding Division of Lincolnshire in 1910, aged only 23. In 1911 he was elected to the Board of the Metropolitan Railway.

On 20 July 1911 he married Barbara Jekyll, daughter of Colonel Sir Herbert Jekyll and his wife Agnes, of Munstead, Surrey. She was the niece of the artist and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. They had two sons: Martin (born 1914) and Guy (born 1915). In London they lived at 8 Little College Street, a six-story house designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, who worked closely with his father-in-law. They were also frequent visitors at Château de la Garoupe in the south of France, the home his parents commissioned the architect Ernest George to build there. 

At the outbreak of war in August 1914, McLaren joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a  Lieutenant. Due to his considerable practical mechanical knowledge he was seconded to the Royal Naval Air Service (Armoured Car Division) and went for training to the east coast of England. He then served with the Hood Battalion in the Gallipoli Campaign on H.M.S. Doris, protecting the troops on land. He was sent ashore with the Armoured Car Squadron III (attached to the ‘Immortal’ 29th Division)^[2] to fight in the trenches, where he saw heavy action, and on one occasion^[3] he carried his injured driver back to allied lines and was recommended for Mention in Despatches. His squadron was ordered to Alexandria but McLaren became so ill with dysentery that he had to be invalided home. Determined to return to the front he joined the Royal Flying Corps, but again fell ill and was invalided out of service.  

He appealed to the War Office and was readmitted into the Flying Corps only to be killed in a flying accident on the final flight of his training out from Montrose, Scotland, on 30 August 1917. His funeral was held at Busbridge Church, near Godalming, Surrey on 5 September. Gertrude Jekyll was among the mourners, as were former Prime Minister Asquith and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna. His name was included on the war memorial designed by Lutyens for Ayscoughfee Gardens in his old constituency of Spalding. He is also remembered on the north wall in Busbridge Church beside the War Memorial Window, and is buried in the churchyard there next to the Jekyll family tomb. The grave marker of carved oak was also designed by Lutyens, and was restored and re-dedicated in 2001.  

EXHIBITED:

The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies By Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1923, no. 27

LITERATURE:

The House of Commons Book of Remembrance, 1914-1918

KF 2016