8976

Pauline Munn 1929

Half-length to the left in three quarter profile her head turned and looking to the right, an organza stole draped round her shoulders, her hands holding it

Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 85.1 cm (42 x 33 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László 1929 / PARIZ [sic]

Sitters’ Book II, f. 64: Pauline Munn Paris 1929

The Drexel Collection, Drexel University, Philadelphia

During the same period as he painted the present portrait, de László painted Pauline’s mother, Mrs Charles Munn [8882]. The sitter’s younger sister recalled de László coming to their Paris home at 6 bis Rue Montevideo during the time that he was painting their mother. A courtyard studio room had been put aside for her sister Mary and the artist looked in on his way to the dining room to give her a brief painting lesson before luncheon.^[1] The sitter’s uncle, Anthony Joseph Drexel Paul [7463] and his wife, Isabel Biddle Paul [7460] were also painted in Paris in 1922.

Four years after painting this portrait, the artist received a letter from the sitter: “I have had Mr. Davis of Knoedler’s up here to see Pauline’s and my portraits. He says they are both in great need of washing and varnishing, but he thinks they also require slight touching up by you, and he would not like to begin to do anything until you have seen them yourself.”^[2] De László concurred that the pictures should have been washed and varnished, “as generally pictures are varnished after two or three years.” He agreed, when next in Paris, to inspect the pictures to see what Mr. Davis had meant, and to “touch up” the portraits if necessary, allowing Knoedler’s to carry out the washing and varnishing.^[3] In June 1931 he recorded in his diary that he visited them and made some minor alterations to the present portrait.^[4]

Pauline Munn was born in the Astoria Hotel, Paris, in 1909, the eldest of the four children of Charles Alexander Munn and his wife Mary Astor Paul of Philadelphia. In 1927, she made her society debut at a tea at Woodcrest Lodge, Radnor, Pennsylvania. She also made her debut in Paris, under the sponsorship of Mrs. Alexander van Rensselaer.^[5] On 20 August 1931, at Villa Isoletta, Eze, France (near Cap Ferrat), she married Milton Dorland Doyle, a New York broker. They honeymooned on the Riviera before returning to live in America.^[6] There were no children of the marriage and they divorced in 1938.^[7] Pauline died at the American Hospital in Neuilly, near Paris, on 8 June 1939,^[8] of a streptococcal infection of the heart.

The sitter was also painted by John Singer Sargent in 1917.

PROVENANCE:

Donated to the Drexel Museum, Drexel University, by Jacques Allez, the sitter’s step-father, 1976

LITERATURE:

•László, Philip de, 1931 diary, private collection, 9 June entry, p. 164

•László, Philip de, June-November 1935 diary, private collection, 4 July 1935 entry, p. 33

•DLA076-0188, letter from Mrs. Charles Munn to de László, 13 July 1933

•DLA076-0189, letter from de László to Mrs. Charles Munn, 13 July 1933

MD 2015