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Study portrait

Mrs Larz Anderson, née Isabel Weld Perkins 1925

Head and shoulders slightly to the left, head turned and looking full face to the viewer, wearing a nursing uniform with a white headdress, the French Croix de Guerre with bronze star and the Medal of the Order of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium

Oil on board, 96.5 x 72.4 cm (38 x 28 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / Boston. / 1925  

Sitters’ Book II, f. 48: Isabel Anderson / Larz Anderson / Washington / March 1926 / "Mr & Mrs A" Larz Anderson

The Larz Anderson Auto Museum, Brookline, Massachusetts, USA

De László wrote to Larz Anderson 27 October 1925, from the Hotel Vendome in Boston,  proposing to paint a large double portrait of him and his wife [2589]. In the same letter, he commented, “I fully [believe] that it would be important to leave to posterity a memento of Mrs. Anderson’s great humanitarian work, and I wd. be glad to paint a sketch portrait, like the Duchess of Portland’s [4423], which wd. show all outside signs of the valuable work she performed. My honorarium for a ¾ portrait is 2000 guineas, for full length 3000 gs. The group I would do for 6000 gs.”^[1]

During the First World War, the sitter served with the American Red Cross as a volunteer in the District of Columbia Refreshment Corps. She was a leader of Washington’s Red Cross activities and Belgian relief work and spent eight months between 1917 and 1918 caring for the sick and wounded in France and Belgium. When she returned to Washington she found the city in the midst of an influenza epidemic and again volunteered to help those in need. In recognition of her work, she was awarded awarded the American Red Cross Service Medal, the French Croix de Guerre with bronze star, and the Order of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, a campaign medal for humanitarian service in the war. De László painted Queen Elisabeth in spring 1925 [7870].

De László deeply admired the contribution of women to the war effort and made similar portraits of First World War nurses: Mrs Richard Warde [10077], Mrs Gladys Bellville [2133] and Lady Stanley of Alderley [2767]. It was his intention to paint a large subject picture showing the suffering of women in war and though he made some sixty preparatory works he never completed it [2974].  

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [2589].

EXHIBITED:

•The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Special Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 5-27 December 1925, no. 20

LITERATURE:

•The Anderson Papers, The Society of the Cincinnati Headquarters, Library and Museum at Anderson House, folder no. 38.379

•Coupures, the Artist’s Scrapbook, p. 60, “Laszlo’s Boston,” Boston Evening Transcript, 5 December 1925

•Anderson, Isabel, ed., Larz Anderson: Letters and Journals of a Diplomat, Fleming H. Revell Company, New York, 1930, pp. 474-476

MD & KF 2020