111062

Study portrait

Captain Herbert Henry Spender Clay 1915

Half-length, slightly to the right, full face to the viewer, wearing service dress with Sam Browne and decorations with the ribbon of the Queen’s South Africa Medal

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: P.A. de László / 1915. III. 21

Laib L6348(410) / C30(13)

NPG 1915-1916 Album, p. 10

Studio Inventory, p. 161 (309): Now H.R.H. the Duchess of Kent.

Private Collection

A hurriedly written letter of Tuesday 16 March 1915 describes the urgency with which de László had to work to carry out commissions to paint officers leaving for the front in the first years of the First World War: “Mrs Spender Clay is anxious to have a sketch of me in Khaki if you could be persuaded to do it. I have been home from France a short time + am daily expecting a fresh appointment. If therefore you could find time to do it, I should like to come as soon as possible. I am leaving London tomorrow but would be free Friday or Saturday.”^[1] The study was signed and dated by de László the following Sunday.

In May 1936 de László, at Spender Clay’s request, added to the portrait the medals the sitter had been awarded since the time of the original sittings. “He has changed much,” the artist wrote in his diary. “The portrait stayed fresh – as if yesterday finished.”^[2]

Herbert Henry Spender Clay was born on 4 June 1875, the only son of Joseph Spender Clay, J.P. (1826-1885) of Ford Manor, Lingfield, Surrey, and his wife née Elizabeth Garrett (d. 1912). Following the death of her husband when her son was ten, Elizabeth remarried, to Beresford Melville, who became Conservative M.P. for Stockport in 1895. Herbert’s younger sister Violet married the future 5th Earl of Lucan in 1896.

Herbert was educated at Eton and Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned in the 2nd Life Guards in 1896. He served in the Boer War from 1899 to 1900 during which time he was awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal with six clasps. He resigned his commission in 1902.

On 29 October 1904, he married Pauline Astor (1880-1970), daughter of William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor (1848-1919) and his wife, née Mary Dahlgren Paul (1858-1894). Pauline’s brother, 2nd Viscount Astor, was painted in 1924 [2608], her sister-in-law Baroness Astor in 1925 [8208] and 1927 [2445] and nephew The Honourable Hugh Astor in 1925 [2606]. There were two daughters of the marriage: Phyllis Mary (born 1905) and Rachel Pauline (born 1907). A third daughter (born 1910), died aged two. Rachel married David Bowes Lyon [7319] in 1929, brother of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother [4460]. From 1910 Herbert Spender Clay was Conservative M.P. for South-West Kent, a seat he held until November 1918.

Following the outbreak of the First World War he rejoined his regiment and served as a staff officer in France and Belgium. He was mentioned in dispatches, awarded the Military Cross in 1917 and the C.M.G. in 1918. From 1918 to 1930 he remained a lieutenant-colonel in the Reserve of Officers and in December 1918 was re-elected to Parliament as M.P. for Tonbridge. He was parliamentary charity commissioner from 1923 to 1929 in which year he was sworn a Privy Councillor. He died on 15 February 1937.

Herbert Spender Clay’s wife was painted full-length by John Singer Sargent in 1899.^[3]

LITERATURE:

•László, Philip de, March-July 1936 diary, private collection, 28 May entry, p. 97

•DLA062-0099, letter from Herbert Spender Clay to de László, 16 March 1915

•DLA065-0073 to 0077, letters from Herbert Spender Clary to de László, dated 1936, regarding the addition of his medals to the portrait.

CWS 2022