6314

Portrait drawing

Chief Medicine Eagle 1923

Half-length in profile to the left, head turned in three-quarter profile and looking to the viewer, wearing a full tribal feather headdress, his hair in plaits and his arms folded across his chest.

Charcoal and graphite on paper, stuck on board, 71.8 x 48.9 cm (28 ¼ x 19 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László 1923   

Private Collection

De László made two portraits of Chief Medicine Eagle during a single sitting of two hours in his studio at 3 Fitzjohn’s Avenue. The oil portrait [6303] is in profile to the left, while the present portrait is in three-quarter profile.

This portrait was used as a postcard to promote the 1923 Paramount film The Covered Wagon. It was the highest grossing film of that year and a favourite of President Warren G. Harding [5569], who hosted a special screening of it in the White House. The present portrait remained in de László’s collection until it was sold at Christie’s 1 March 1929 to benefit the charity of the actor Johnny Danvers (1860-1939).

PROVENANCE:  

Sold Christies, London, 1 March 1929, lot 123;

Triplett Family of Marblehead, Massachusetts;

Comenos Fine Arts, Boston, Mass.

LITERATURE:          

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 160, fig. 78

KF 2021