6147

Study portrait

Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh^[1] 1914

Head and shoulders in three-quarter profile to the right, wearing service dress

Oil on board, 90.2 x 73.3 cm (35 ½ x 26 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P.A. de László / LONDON / 1914 / - Aug. 19.   

Inscribed verso: painted in four hours with interval of tea - the day before the departure of C.V. to the front against Germany. P. de L.

Laib L685(783) / C5(28)

Mount Stewart, Londonderry Collection, The National Trust

According to Owen Rutter, de László’s first biographer, the present work was the first military portrait the artist painted after the start of the First World War.^[2] He painted about seventy-five such pictures before his internment 21 September 1917. De László was subsequently exonerated and returned to his portrait practice in June 1919.

Lady Castlereagh wrote to commission this study-portrait when war broke out: “My husband is going off to the war on Thursday as General Pulteney’s [6718] aide-de-camp. I do feel for you too so much, your poor countrymen and women – I should be eternally grateful to you if you could do a crayon portrait of Castlereagh in his khaki tunic, like the one you did of Admiral Beatty [2133],^[3] if you possibly could on Wed. afternoon.”^[4] Although her letter was not dated, the artist’s inscription on the board shows it was painted on Sunday 19 August 1914, and not Wednesday as suggested. The sittings took place in one afternoon with a break for tea according to an inscription in de László’s hand on the verso. Newspapers later reported that the study-portrait was completed in three hours only.^[5]

Lady Castlereagh’s verdict on the picture was as follows: “I think it perfectly charming, how wonderful in such a short space of time.”^[6] She explained that the departure of her husband for the front had been delayed and added: “if you do come again to London, do let me know, so that we can look at the picture & the original together, I think the latter is a little pinker and more oval on the left side of his face, than you have represented him, but I don’t suppose, for an instant, that you and I see him, through the same eyes!!”^[7] It is not known whether de László altered the portrait but he was always reluctant to do this. He had already made several compromises when painting the three-quarter length portrait of Lady Castlereagh the previous year [6142] so he may have been acquiescent again in the present instance.

Castlereagh was commissioned as a captain at the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914. His first posting was to Paris 29 August 1914 as aide-de-camp to General William Pulteney. Although a staff officer, Castlereagh saw plenty of fighting and witnessed the terrible destruction and suffering of the British troops in the trenches. At the death of his father in 1915 he became 7th Marquess of Londonderry and rejoined his regiment, the Royal Horse Guards (The Blues). He served at the front during the Battle of the Somme where his closest friend and best man at his wedding, Lieutenant Colonel Harold Brassey, was killed. De László painted Harold’s younger brother Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Brassey in 1917 [110778].

In 1917 Londonderry took command of a composite battalion drawn from the 8th Cavalry Brigade that took part in mounted cavalry attacks on Monchy-le-Preux on the morning of 11 April 1917 during the Battle of Arras. Monchy-le-Preux was a key area of high ground to the northern end of the Hindenburg Line. After the death of Brigadier-General Charles Bulkeley-Johnson, Londonderry temporarily took command of the 8th Cavalry Brigade. The fighting at Monchy resulted in the death of six hundred cavalrymen and many more horses as troops were forced to tether them in the open while taking cover from the shelling.

After serving in the Irish Convention of 1917–18, Lord Londonderry served on the short-lived Viceroy's Advisory Council meeting at Dublin Castle in the autumn of 1918. Promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel on 7 November 1918 he retired from the army on 10 September 1919 and was made a Knight of the Garter the same year.

A copy of this portrait was painted by Frederick Cullen, one of de László’s few authorised copyists.  

For biographical notes on the sitter see [6136].

PROVENANCE:

Given to the National Trust by Lady Mairi Bury, daughter of the sitter, 1976

EXHIBITION:

•Hotel Jean Charpentier, Paris, Exposition P. A. de László, June 1931, no. 17

LITERATURE:

•The Sketch, 5 November 1924, p. 282

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1939, pp. 277 & 296

•Hyde, Hugh Montgomery, Londonderry House and its Pictures, London, 1937, pp. 28-9 & 57

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 135, 148

•A Captivating Collection, Mount Stewart, National Trust, 2015, p. 21, ill.

•Lauritzen, Peter, “The Marquesses of Londonderry at Mount Stewart,” Mount Stewart; National Trust Historic House & Collections Annual 2017, National Trust and Apollo, 2017, ill. p. 20

•DLA061-0074, letter from Lady Castlereagh to de László, 1914

•DLA061-0073, letter from Lady Castlereagh to de László, 1914

CC 2008

KF 2018