4053

Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood 1932

Seated almost full-length, wearing his robes as Chancellor of Birmingham University, holding a document in his right hand, his left resting on the arm of his chair

Oil on canvas, 162.5 x 106.7 cm (64 x 42 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1932 VII 

Laib L17698 (452) / C5 (3A)  

NPG Album 1932, p. 17

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 73: Cecil 1 June 1932

The University of Birmingham

On 25 October 1930, James Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, and David Lloyd George [6076] wrote to the Editor of the Times to pay a tribute to Lord Cecil: “The formation and maintenance of the League of Nations are due to the labours of many distinguished men of many nationalities, but it has fallen to Lord Cecil to devote himself single-mindedly to strengthening the League and promoting an intelligent understanding of its work among all classes of his fellow-citizens. A committee has been formed for the purpose of presenting Lord Cecil with his portrait, in the hope that it will eventually become a public possession in the National Portrait Gallery.”^[1] 

The appeal was successful, and de László was chosen to paint the portrait of Lord Cecil, who explained in his memoirs what determined this choice. His sister Lady Maud [7052] and her late husband the Earl of Selborne [6965] supported de László during the First World War, “for which he was profoundly grateful. He had in gratitude painted little portraits of both of them [7056] [7052], the one of my sister being remarkably successful. Indeed it was the excellence of that picture which induced the Committee to ask him to paint me.”^[2] The resulting portrait of Lord Cecil is very different from that of the Countess of Selborne – a somewhat severe head-and-shoulders portrait painted in an oval. Rather, it is reminiscent of the 1913 portrait of Lord Curzon in his robes as Chancellor of the University of Oxford [3890], not only because of the near identical dress, but also because of the artist’s viewpoint. Lord Cecil, however, looks away, as if to signify his engagement with the world and its political issues, in contrast to Curzon’s direct, almost confrontational gaze.

De László eventually returned his honorarium for the present portrait to the League of Nations Union, as a donation. Lord Cecil wrote: “[de László] did it with great generosity for nothing […] throwing in a smaller and, I think, a better version of it which now hangs at Hatfield [4055].^[3] László was a most interesting talker. He told me the number of portraits he had painted, which amounted, I think, to two thousand! and comprised everyone from Popes downwards.”^[4] In the absence of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, the portrait was presented to Lord Cecil by Stanley Baldwin in December 1932 at University College, London. It was bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery after Lord Cecil’s death, but was later de-accessioned.  

A copy by Sydney Kendrick remains at the Palais des Nations in Geneva [111387].

There exist preparatory oil [4058] and pencil sketches ([3287]&[3292]) for the present portrait, both of which were in the possession of the artist on his death. De László also kept a fine portrait drawing as a souvenir of his sitter [110603]. The head-and-shoulders study-portrait [4055] referred to by Lord Cecil, also painted in 1932, was presented to the sitter by a group of friends and admirers.

Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne-Cecil was born on 14 September 1864 in London, the third son of Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903), and his wife Georgina Caroline Alderson (d. 1899). Educated at home until he was thirteen, he then spent four difficult years at Eton, after which he was instructed by a private tutor for a year. In 1883, he entered University College, Oxford, where he flourished, taking a Second in Jurisprudence in 1886. The following year, he was called to the Bar (Inner Temple), and specialised in parliamentary work.  

In 1889, he married Lady Eleanor Lambton, the daughter of George Frederick D’Arcy Lambton, 2nd Earl of Durham. In 1899, Cecil became a Member of the General Council of the Bar QC and, in 1910, a Bencher of the Inner Temple. He began his political career in 1906, when he became Conservative MP for Marylebone East. He filled various Governmental positions until 1923, even though his progressive political ideas were sometimes at odds with those of the Conservative Party. When the First World War broke out, Cecil, too old to enlist, worked for the Red Cross in France. From May 1915, he was parliamentary under-secretary of state for foreign affairs under Asquith, to which duty was added the role of Minister of Blockade in February 1916. Despite disagreements with Lloyd George [6076], who succeeded Asquith, Cecil remained in office, and played an important role in highlighting the interest of applying economic sanctions to enforce international law. He was the first minister to become a great supporter of the creation of a league of nations; it was he who circulated a Foreign Office paper on the subject as early as September 1916, and who argued strongly in favour of its creation.

In 1919, he became adviser to the British legation on issues regarding the league at the Paris peace conference, where he proved instrumental in founding the League of Nations. Instead of returning to the law, he soon became the leader of the League of Nations Union (LNU), which had formed at the end of 1918. In May 1923, he was made cabinet minister responsible for league affairs, as Lord Privy Seal, and the same year he became President of the LNU, an office he held until 1945. Cecil left the cabinet when Baldwin resigned in January 1924, and was created Viscount Cecil of Chelwood on 24 December 1923. When Baldwin returned to office in November 1924, Cecil was reappointed as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Irritated by his colleagues’ softness on the questions of disarmament, he resigned on 9 August 1927, to the embarrassment of the government. He nevertheless returned to office when the second MacDonald government appointed him as a British delegate to the League of Nations, and kept this office under the National Government. After the collapse of the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933, with Germany leaving the league, Cecil played a crucial role in organizing the “Peace Ballot”, which showed the National Government that people were largely in favour of the League. It resulted in the adoption of economic sanctions against Italy when it attacked Abyssinia, and to the dismissal of Sir Samuel Hoare, the foreign secretary, who was privately seeking to strike a deal with Mussolini.

His next battle was the International Peace Campaign, launched in France in 1935. A keen supporter of this, Cecil failed to recognize that it actually weakened the LNU by duplicating it. In 1939, realizing his mistake, he resigned from the IPC’s British national committee. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. During the Second World War, he remained faithful to the League, despite a growing current of federalism, and was rewarded at the end of the conflict when the United Nations were founded. He was made an Honorary Life President of the United Nations Association, and in 1956 a Companion of Honour. An Honorary Fellow of many Universities, he was Chancellor of Birmingham University from 1918 until 1944.  

He died at Tunbridge Wells in Kent on 24 November 1958.

SOURCE: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

PROVENANCE:        

Bequeathed to the NPG by the sitter;

De-accessioned and sold at Christie’s, 11 October 1973, lot 24;

University of Birmingham

EXHIBITED:

•Victoria Art Galleries, Dundee, Exhibition of recent Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., September 1932, no. 57 or 58 (one of these most likely to be the study-portrait of the sitter)

•M. Knoedler & Co., London, Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June-July 1933, no. 33

LITERATURE:

•The Times, 25 October 1930, p. 13                      

•The Sphere, 10 December 1932, p. 437, ill.

•Cecil of Chelwood, Viscount, All the Way, Hodder & Stoughton, London 1949, pp. 194-5

•Cecil of Chelwood, Viscount, A Great Experiment, Oxford University Press, New York, 1941 (US Edition), p. 212

•László, Philip de, 1931 diary, private collection

•DLA135-0002, letter from de László to Marczell László, 18 December 1932

CC 2012