7519

Portrait drawing

Lieutenant Frederick Thomas Trouton 1915

Head and shoulders slightly to the right, full face, wearing the service dress and beret of the Cameron Highlanders

Charcoal and pencil on white paper, 73.7 x 53.4 cm (29 x 21 in.) 

Inscribed lower left: P A de László 1915 April 19. Surrey

Laib L7677(396) / C26(12) Trouton 

Laib L7966(259) / C30(12) Unidentified man

NPG 1915-16 Album, p. 73

Private Collection

According to Frederick Trouton’s younger brother Rupert, the sitter was not keen to sit for his portrait and this drawing took not much more that half an hour complete.^[1]  In the early years of the First World War de László and his family spent much of their time in Tilford, Surrey, where they rented a house very close to the Trouton Family. This portrait is inscribed Surrey and must have been completed there. Frederick left for the Front the day after the portrait was made and never returned. A family photograph showing him in uniform must also have been taken at this time and commemorates the last time the Troutons were gathered together. The sitter’s younger brother Desmond [11593], whom de László painted in uniform, was killed in 1917 near Ypres. Lithographic copies were made of this portrait and two are known to be in family collections.  

Frederick Thomas ‘Erik’ Trouton was born 1 January 1892, in Dublin, eldest son of Professor Frederick Trouton (1863-1922) [5468] and his wife Annie Fowler (1864-1928) [7488]. He had three brothers: Desmond (born 1893) [11593], Maurice (born 1895) [7521], Rupert (born 1897) and three sisters, Anne (born 1900) [11580], Ruth (born 1904) and Mary (born 1906) [7529]. He attended Bilton Grange and Winchester College. On leaving school he did a winter term at the University of Berlin before returning to England and attending Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1913 with Honours in Natural History.

In 1914 he was offered an appointment in the Civil Service but declined in order to join the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), formed in October 1914 at Aldershot. In May 1915 he took command of D Company and they departed for France 10 July, reaching the front line at Mazingarde 26 July. Trouton was killed in the offensive at Loos 25 September 1915, one of ten officers killed in the first two hundred yards of the attack. His body was not recovered and he is commemorated on the Loos Memorial, panel 57-59.

PROVENANCE:

Rupert Sydney Trouton, younger brother of the sitter

LITERATURE

•“The Roll of Honour: British Officers Who Have Fallen,” The Graphic, 6 November 1915, p. 599, ill.

•Laszlo, Sandra de, ed., and Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush With Grandeur, Paul Holberton Publishers, London, 2004, p. 135, fig. 71

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 62

KF 2018