2431

CUT DOWN

Vere Brabazon Ponsonby, Lord Duncannon 1915

Half-length to the right, head turned in three-quarter profile and looking left, wearing a great coat over service dress with Sam Browne belt

Oil on board, 74.3 x 61.3 cm (29 ¼ x 24 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P.A de László / 1915 may 21.

Laib L7683(686) / C7(23)  (original portrait)

Sitters’ Book I, f. 103: Duncannon May 19th 1915

The Stansted Park Foundation

De László painted Lord Duncannon and his younger brother Major the Honourable Cyril Myles Brabazon Ponsonby [6702] within a month of each other in 1915. Both were depicted in service dress and were on leave from France, where they were serving in the First World War. The present portrait was cut down at an unknown date and its original composition is preserved in a contemporary photograph by Paul Laib [5994], de László’s photographer .

The artist also painted Lord Duncannon’s sister-in-law Rita Narcissa Longfield in 1914 [6703], her sister Nora, in 1916 [3032], Anne Marie Ponsonby [7176] in 1932, who was the wife of his nephew, the son of his brother Cyril and Lady Sysonby [2797], wife of Sir Frederick Ponsonby of a junior branch of the family.

De László met the sitter again in 1936 at a cocktail party in London and recorded the encounter in his diary: “we rushed to the Henry Cavendish Bentinck’s cocktail party – met their [sic] amongst others – Lord Desborough [sic, i.e. ‘Bessborough’] (Ponsonby) & his charming french wife which I know as miss Neuflize – painted during the war his portrait in military uniform & his handsome brother – Ponsonby – in guards uniform – who was killed in the war & during the Irish rebellion his house & my portrait burned.”^[1]

Vere Brabazon Ponsonby was born 27 October 1880, the eldest son of Edward, 8th Earl of Bessborough (1851-1920) and his wife Blanche Vere Guest (1847-1919). He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1901. He began a career in law and in 1903 was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple. His father inherited the Earldom in 1906 and the sitter became known as Lord Duncannon. On 25 June 1912 he married Roberte de Neuflize, daughter of Jean Poupart, Baron de Neuflize and his wife Madeleine Dollfus-Davillier. There were four children of the marriage: Frederick (born 1913), Desmond (born 1915), Moyra (born 1918) and George (born 1931).

He entered Parliament in 1910 as MP for Cheltenham and from 1913 for Dover. At the outbreak of the First World War he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry. He was transferred on 11 November 1914 to the Suffolk Hussars where he was appointed captain and promoted to acting major. He served at Gallipoli in 1915 and from 1916 to 1918 was a member of the military staff in France. During his wartime service, he was mentioned in dispatches, awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the French Légion d'Honneur, appointed to the Italian Order of St Maurice and St Lazarus, the Belgian Order of Leopold II, Greece's Order of the Redeemer, as well as a Third Class Member of the Russian Order of St Anna. In the 1919 Honours List he was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George.

He succeeded his father as 9th Earl of Bessborough, an Irish Earldom, in 1920. On the recommendation of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, in 1931 George V appointed him as 14th Governor General of Canada, a post he held for four years. His inauguration from Rideau Hall, the official residence, was the first to be broadcast by radio. As the King’s representative in the country, he acted as host to world leaders and foreign dignitaries including those attending the Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa in 1932. During his tenure he launched the first trans-Canada telephone line by calling each of the lieutenant governors and, as Governor-in-Council, he created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (the CBC). Bessborough's time as Governor General coincided with the celebrations in May 1935 for the Silver Jubilee of the King's reign, part of which included his launching the King's Jubilee Cancer Fund with a radio broadcast from Rideau Hall.  

Lord Bessborough returned to London in 1935 and resumed his directorships in several large commercial firms, including the São Paulo Railway and the Margarine Union, as well as deputy chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines. During the Second World War, he worked to establish a department in the British Foreign Office dedicated to the welfare of French refugees in the United Kingdom.

The Earl died 10 March 1956 at Stansted House, near Chichester, which he had purchased in 1924. He was succeeded by his son Frederick.

LITERATURE:

•Bessborough, The 10th Earl of, A Place in the Forest, Batsford, 1956, listed in Appendix: Principal Pictures in the House

•Bessborough, The Earl of, with Clive Aslet, Enchanted Forest: The Story of Stansted in Sussex, London 1984, p. 141, ill. facing p. 37

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 95

•László, Philip de, March-July 1936 diary, private collection, 26 May entry, p. 96

KF 2020