5201

President Theodore Roosevelt 1908

Seated three-quarter length to the right wearing riding clothes, a black cape with a purple lining and holding a riding crop and yellow gloves in his right hand, both hands resting on his knees

Oil on canvas, 124.5 x 160 cm (49 x 63 in.)

Inscribed top right: P.A. László / Washington / 1908 

Juley negative 0058589

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 80: With the hearty thanks and good will / of / Theodore Roosevelt / The White House, March 22nd 1908 / much though I like your picture of me - for it is a picture / as well as a portrait - I like even better your sketch of Mrs. Roosevelt. / T.R.

The American Museum of Natural History, New York City

This portrait was commissioned by Arthur Lee, MP [6191], for his library at Chequers Court,^[1] to commemorate his friendship with the President. The latter, due to pressure of time, only very reluctantly agreed in 1907 to be painted by de László and sittings took place at the White House in March 1908. During this time de László also made a portrait study of Mrs Roosevelt [5203], which now hangs at the President's former country retreat, Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt wrote to Lee on 8 April 1908: “I like the picture he has made of me better than any other, and so does Mrs. Roosevelt. I took a great fancy to Laszló [sic] himself, and it is the only picture which I really enjoyed having painted.”^[2] 

Roosevelt chose to be painted in his riding clothes as he said he spent all day in his frock coat and Sargent had already painted an official portrait of him in formal dress.^[3] As Commissioner of Police in New York in the 1880s he wore the black cloak on night prowls to check on his officers incognito, and he continued to wear it as mufti all his life.

When von Schleinitz’s book on de László came out in the spring of 1913, a signed copy was sent to the President, which gave Roosevelt an opportunity to express his enthusiasm for de László’s work: “Our good friend Mr. Lee has just handed me your volume. I am so glad to get it. You must let me congratulate you upon the remarkable career you have had, and upon all that you are now doing. Your picture of me is the one I like best, and I have it in my library, where I can look at it now, and the charming sketch you made of Mrs. Roosevelt, the only picture of her that I have ever liked.”^[4]

De László’s portrait of the president was so well liked that five official copies were made. There is one copy of the present portrait by Adrian Lamb in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC. Of the four others, one, by de László’s authorized British copyist Frederick Cullen is at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site; two, by Adrian Lamb, at the Roosevelt Birthplace in New York City and at the National Defence University, Washington, D.C., and the last, by the American artist Charles Skipworth, is in the ownership of a descendant of the sitter. The de László portrait was chosen in preference to many others as being the best likeness of the President. There also exists correspondence from de László to the President, dated January and February 1909, in which the artist requests a signed photograph of his portrait from the President. The request was apparently granted as de László thanked the President in a second letter and informed him that Mr Lee had agreed to lend the portrait to an exhibition in Berlin in February 1909, to be shown alongside de László’s recent portraits of the German Imperial Family.^[5] 

De László painted Roosevelt again, after he left office, in Paris in 1910 [5205], at the request of his friend Ambassador Robert Bacon. The sitter was also painted by John Singer Sargent in 1903.

Theodore Roosevelt, born in New York on 27 October 1858, was one of four children of Theodore Roosevelt Senior, a merchant banker and Lincoln Republican, and his wife Martha Bulloch of Georgia. In 1880 he married Alice Hathaway Lee. In the same year he graduated from Harvard, and continued with his law studies at Columbia University; but his interest in history and writing led him to publish The Naval War 1812 in 1882, the first of over thirty five books he would write throughout his life. He stood as an independent Republican assemblyman from New York’s 21st district 1882-4, strongly believing in reform and better government. His first wife died in February 1884, two days after the birth of their only child Alice. His mother died on the same day. In 1888, in London, he married Edith Kermit Carow (born 1861), daughter of Charles Carow and his wife Gertrude Tyler. They had five children, Theodore Jr (born 1887), Kermit [5152] (born 1887), Ethel (born 1891), Archie (born 1894) and Quentin (born 1897).

In May 1889 Roosevelt was made a US civil service commissioner, and from 1894 until 1896, President of the Board of Police Commissioners. In 1898 he took active service in the war against Spain, established a volunteer cavalry regiment called the  ‘Rough Riders’ and was made a Colonel.  His popularity propelled him towards the role as vice-president to President McKinley, and on the President’s assassination, Roosevelt was sworn into office in Buffalo, New York on 14 September 1901. He was the twenty-sixth President of the United States, serving until 1909; and, at that time, the youngest President in the nation's history. He re-organised the national administrative system, streamlining the red-tape and vigorously reforming government. He steered the United States more actively into world politics: he ensured the construction of the Panama Canal and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for mediating the Russo-Japanese War. He was a keen naturalist and was considered the world’s authority on large American mammals. Some of his most effective achievements were in conservation. During his tenure in office he designated National Forests, Federal Bird Reservations, National Parks, National Monuments, National Game Reserves and reclamation projects. He was also a keen huntsman. The ‘life of strenuous endeavour’ was also expected of those around him.  

All five children from his second marriage served overseas in the First World War. Their youngest son Quentin, was killed in July 1918. Theodore Roosevelt’s already failing health deteriorated rapidly and he died at home in Sagamore Hill, Long Island, on 6 January 1919.

PROVENANCE:          

Lord Lee of Fareham;

Donated by him to the Government of the United States of America, 1938

EXHIBITED:

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Exhibition of Portraits by P. A. Laszlo, 9-16 April 1908

•Dowdeswell Galleries, London, An Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. László, 1908, no. 31

•Schulte Gallery, Berlin, 1909^[6]

•Lent to the White House, 1969-1974, at the request of President Richard Nixon, hung in the Cabinet Room

•National Academy Museum, New York. Glancing Backward: Edith Wharton's New York, 18 May-30 October 1994

LITERATURE:          

•Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, n° 12, 21 March 1909, p. 198

•The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Morison, VI, pp. 995, 4670

•Im Wandel der Jahrtausende: eine Welgeschichte in Wort und Bild, n˚43, Stuttgart, Berlin, Leipzig: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1910, p. 429, ill.

•Schleinitz, Otto von, “Philipp A. von László,” Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte, vol. XXVII, no. 1, September 1912, ill.

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, n°106, Ph A. von László, Bielefeld and Leipzig (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, ill p. 85, pl. 101

•Williams, Oakley, ed., Selections from the Work of P.A. de László, Hutchinson, London, 1921, pp. 81-4, ill. facing p. 80

•Abbott, Lawrence, Personality, November 1927

•Current History, August 1930 [precise date and page number unknown]

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 247, 249, 250-6              

•Roosevelt, Theodore, An Autobiography, Introduction by Elting E. Morison, Macmillan, N.Y., 1913 and re-published by Da Capo Press, 1985, ill. frontispiece

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 23, fig. 11

•László, Lucy de, 1902-1911 diary, 22 March 1908 entry, p. 141

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 106, 108-110, 115, ill. 63

•Boera, A. Richard, “An Obscure Book Sheds Light on Major Presidential Portrait of Theodore Roosevelt,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Volume XXXVII, Numbers 1, 2, & 3, Winter-Spring-Summer 2016, pp. 25, 35, 80

•Boera, A. Richard, ”The Rest of the Story: “Official” Copies of Philip de László’s 1908 Painting of Theodore Roosevelt (and More), Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Volume XXXVII, Number 4, Fall 2016, p. 27

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 83

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 120, ill. pp. 113, 127

•Field, Katherine, Philip Alexius de László; 150th Anniversary Exhibition, de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 22

•Field, Katherine ed., Gábor Bellák and Beáta Somfalvi, Philip de László (1869-1937); "I am an Artist of the World", Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2019, pp. 9, 43, 68

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, pp. 10, 106

•NSzL150-0155, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 5 March 1908

•DLA140-0202, “László and His Portrait of the President”, The American Review of Reviews, May 1908, pp. 550-551, ill. p. 551

•DLA140-0208, “Studio-Talk”, The Studio, vol. 44, no. 186, September 1908, pp. 286-7, ill. p. 286

•DLA162-0239, Pesti Hírlap, 14 November 1908, p. 12

•DLA140-0243, The Illustrated London News, 21 May 1910, p. 775

CC 2013