4473

Lady Wantage, née Harriet Loyd 1910

Seated three-quarter length in three-quarter profile to the left on a Caroline carved dining chair, wearing a voluminous black dress with pale lace embroidery around the collar and cuffs, black lace fingerless gloves, a pendant pearl necklace and drop earrings and a cross hanging from a chain around her neck, both hands resting in front of her on a walking stick

Oil on canvas, 137.8 x 112.4 cm (54 ½ x 44 ½ in.)

Indistinctly inscribed top left: P.A. László / 1910.I.

Sitters’ Book I, f. 84: Harriet S. Wantage Dec. 13th / 1909

The Loyd Collection, Lockinge

Lady Wantage first signed the artist’s sitters’ book 13 December 1909, and de László is recorded in the visitors’ book at her home Lockinge on 15 December and 20-23 December. He returned 20 January 1910 to complete the picture and Lucy de László records in her diary that it was completed 23 January.^[1] J.M.W. Turner’s Whalley Bridge and Abbey can be seen on the wall behind the sitter, indicating that the sittings took place in the drawing room at Lockinge.^[2] 

De László recalled the time he spent painting this portrait in a letter to Mrs Edwin Konstam [5869] [5871], who was Lady Wantage’s cousin and companion after the death of Lord Wantage in 1901. “My portraits of Lady Wantage and her father are both very well placed. One is conscious of the joy which Mr. and Mrs. Loyd experience living among those beautiful art treasures, and during my last visit there I lived over again those days in which I spent such happy hours painting the portraits.”^[3] 

The present picture was the first of the artist’s works to be accepted by the Royal Academy for their summer exhibition 1 May – 7 August 1911. De László was not happy with how it was hung and evidently informed the sitter who responded: “I am vexed at the picture not having the first-rate place it ought to be entitled to. It makes me almost regret that you finally decided, not withstanding my letter to you, to send it to the R. Academy. But it is such a fine thing that it will hold its own, even in its corner.”^[4] This was justified the next year when it was exhibited at the International Exhibition in Amsterdam and awarded the Diplome d'honneur. Lucy also mentions her husband’s displeasure at the hang: “P. &  I went to private view of Academy. P’s pic:  on the line, but in the corner & he was hot about it. It certainly does not look nearly what it wd if well placed – It is such a beauteous picture.”^[5]

A contemporary copy [111004] of the portrait by Frederick Cullen, one of de László’s authorised copyists, hangs in the dining room of Wantage Hall at Reading University. The artist also painted a study portrait of the sitter during a visit to Lockinge in 1911 [11384].

Harriet Sarah Jones Loyd was born 1 January 1837, the only child of Samuel Jones Loyd, 1st Baron Overstone (1796-1883) and his wife Harriet Wright (1799-1864).  In 1858 she married Robert James Lindsay (1832-1901) who the previous year had been awarded the first Victoria Cross for his gallantry at the Battle of the Alma in the Crimea in 1854. They had first met in Italy in 1851, when the sitter was only 14. At the time of their marriage Robert Lindsay assumed the name of Loyd-Lindsay and they were presented with the estate of Lockinge, near Wantage as a wedding gift from her father. This comprised 20,000 acres and was the largest estate in Berkshire. They also owned Overstone Park in Northamptonshire. There were no children of the marriage. Loyd was elevated to the peerage in 1885, becoming Lord Wantage of Lockinge.

Loyd-Lindsay was required to retire from his successful army career at the request of his wife’s father and was appointed chairman of the British Red Cross Society. Harriet was an influential member of the ladies committee and her services were recognised in 1883 when she was among the first recipients of the Queen Victoria Royal Red Cross order. She was later active in the Anti-Suffrage League

The sitter and her husband were avid collectors of art, adding to the extensive collection of old masters amassed by her father over a period of fifty years. A picture gallery was built at Lockinge to house their acquisitions, which included: Gainsborough’s Lady Eardley with her Daughter, Burne-Jones’s Temperantia and Caritas, Van Dyck’s Queen Henrietta Maria, and five works by J.M.W. Turner, Whalley Bridge and Abbey, Lancashire: Dyers washing and drying cloth, Sheerness as seen from the Nore, High-Street Oxford, Newark Abbey, and Walton Bridges.^[6] She left a large bequest to the National Art Collections Fund on her death.

Lady Wantage died 20 August 1920 and was buried in Ardington churchyard, near Wantage.

EXHIBITED:

•The Royal Academy, 1911, no. 338

•International Art Exhibition, Amsterdam, 1912 [winner of the diplome d’honneur – the highest award

•Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Salon, 1914, p. 19, no. 677

•Hôtel Charpentier, Paris, Exposition P.A. László, 1931

•Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 1945-52, no. 22

LITERATURE:          

•Williams, Oakley, ed., Selections from the Work of P.A. de László, Hutchinson, London, 1921, pp. 149-52, ill. facing p. 148

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, 1939, p. 267, ill. facing p. 272

        •Chamot, M, D. Farr & M. Butlin, Tate Gallery Catalogues, The Modern British paintings, drawings and sculpture, I, 1964, p. 373, no. 2957

•Clifford, Derek, 1969, monochrome ill. pl. 26  

•The Loyd Collection Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings, 1967, no. 39, p. 26, ill. facing p. 27

•The Loyd Collection Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, 1991, no. 39, p. 17, ill. pl. 21        

•Vanity Fair and Hearth & Home, 14 May 1914, p. 14, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 120-121, ill. 69

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 183, ill.

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance,

Blackmore, 2024, p, 15, ill. p. 10

•László, Lucy de, 1910 diary, private collection

•László, Lucy de, 1911 diary, private collection

•DLA123-0086, letter from Lady Wantage to de László, 22 October 1909

•DLA053-0052, letter from Francis Bernard Bourdillon to de László, 1 December 1910

•DLA073-0184, letter from de László to Mrs Edwin Konstam, 15 July 1931

KF 2014