4130

Mrs Chichester de Windt Crookshank, née Mary Usher 1924

Standing almost three-quarter length slightly to the left, head turned and looking to the right, wearing a grey dress, a blue and gold stole over her bare shoulders, a long necklace and an emerald and gold bandeau on her head, her right arm resting on the base of a column

Oil on canvas, 105 x 82 cm (42 ½ x 33 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1924

NPG Album 1923, p. 42

Sitters’ Book II, f. 39: M. U. Crookshank 4th April 1924.

Private Collection

The sitter commissioned her portrait in 1913 but was forced to postpone her sittings in November that year owing to an unspecified operation.^[1] The outbreak of the First World War and de László’s internment delayed the portrait again and it was finally painted in the spring of 1924. Despite the delay of some ten years the fee remained £350.  

The portrait was exhibited at the French Gallery London in 1924 and received praise in the press: “finest of all, some may think, is the “Mrs. Crookshank.” Bright eyes and lips open in Raeburn fashion, shapely shoulder and admirably poised figure, draped in a beautiful shawl, the whole painted with greater artistry than Mr. de Laszlo hitherto has shown, make a most attractive picture.”^[2]

De László painted the sitter’s husband, Colonel Chichester Crookshank in uniform in 1913 [4279] and 1929 [4313]. A contemporary postcard shows the present portrait and the 1913 portrait of her husband hanging in the dining room of their home Johnstounburn, Humbie, East Lothian.

Mary ‘Maimie’ Murray Usher was born on 19 November 1885, the only daughter of Andrew Usher (1826-1898) of Johnstounburn, East Lothian, and his second wife Marion Blackwood Murray (1847-1925). Her father was a prominent whiskey distiller and philanthropist, donating £100,000 to the city of Edinburgh to found Usher Hall, Scotland’s premier concert venue. Maimie married Colonel Chichester de Windt Crookshank (1868-1958) in 1910 and there were four children of the marriage: Chichester (born 1911), twins Arthur and Esther (born 1915) and George (born 1917). They inherited her family home at Johnstounburn and lived there for the rest of their lives. She supported her husband while he served as Unionist MP for Berwick and Haddington and as Conservative MP for Bootle.

Mrs Crookshank was a Champion breeder of Yorkshire Terriers whose names carried the Johnstounburn prefix. Increased financial pressures on their estate after the Second World War led them to turn their home into a hotel, which she ran with her husband for many years.

The sitter died on 2 July 1960.

PROVENANCE:

William Crookshank, son of the sitter;

Sold Belgravia Auction Gallery, 26 March 1974, lot 572;

Baron Thomas Shannon Foran;

By whom given to the Slater Museum, Norwich Free Academy, Norwich, Connecticut, USA, in 2004, in honor of his grandfather, Norwich industrialist James. B. Shannon;

Sold at Winter Associates Auctioneers & Appraisers, 23 July 2018;

Private Collection

EXHIBITED:

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies By Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June, 1924, no. 6

•Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 1925, no. 122

•Victoria Art Galleries, Dundee, Exhibition of recent Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., September, 1932, no. 32

•Colnaghi and The Clarendon Gallery, Society Portraits 1850-1939, 30 October-14 December 1985, no. 75 (“The Emerald Bandeau”)

LITERATURE:

•The Times, 25 June 1924

•M.P., 25 June 1924

•Norwich Bulletin, 13 December 2004

•The Aedile (Publication of the Norwich Free Academy Foundation Inc.), vol. VII, no 1 (Winter 2005), p. 10, ill.

•DLA061-0005, letter from Mrs Crookshank to de László, 11 November 1913  

KF 2022