6226

Mrs Claude Leigh, née Myrtle Johnson and her Daughter Virginia 1933

Seated three-quarter length, Mrs. Leigh to the left, her head turned and looking to the left, wearing a cream evening dress with a pale pink sash tied round her waist, her left arm around her young daughter, who wears a pale blue party dress and coral necklace.

Oil on canvas, 147.5 x 114.5 cm (58 x 45 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1933 V

Laib L17676(797) / C15(17) Mrs. Claude Leigh

NPG Album 1933, f. 30

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 75: Myrtle Leigh 26th April 1933

Collection of Fred and Sherry Ross, USA

Two preparatory studies for this portrait remain in the collection of a descendent of the artist [111614] & [111645].

Myrtle Betsy Marie Johnson was the daughter of Edward Johnson of Chicago, Illinois.^[1] Her first husband was Frederick Lawrence Thorelius of Chicago; they had a daughter, (Myrtle) Joyce.^[2] The sitter later became an actress, apparently adapting the last name Thorelius and taking “Myrtle Thoreau” as her stage name when she was a member of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1924. At the end of that theatrical season she went to Deauville, France, where she met Claude Moss Leigh^[3] (1888-1964), a widower and “London real estate agent, estimated to be worth $1,000,000.” They married in the Marylebone Registry Office on 11 February 1925, and honeymooned on the Riviera.^[4] A daughter, Virginia, was born in 1930.

In the 1930s the Leighs lived in London at No. 25 Upper Brook Street^[5] and maintained a country home, Foliejon Park, in Windsor Great Park. Their names appear regularly in the society pages both in London and New York, notably as the givers of a famous “Gay Nineties” ball in London in December 1933. They divorced in 1940, and by 1942 Mrs Leigh was a resident of the Plaza Hotel, New York.^[6] On 18 November 1944 she remarried, to Frank Delaney, a well-known New York attorney, in Arlington, Virginia, with her daughter Virginia as her only attendant.^[7] They settled at 4 E. 66th St., New York.^[8]

Mrs Leigh was considered a great beauty, and was much sought after as a sitter for portraits and photographs. The National Portrait Gallery, London, holds several photographs of her taken by the famous photographer Dorothy Wilding (1893-1976). A portrait painted by John Sanderson-Wells (1872-1955), painted c. 1925 and exhibited in the Royal Academy, London, in 1928,^[9] is in a private collection in England. She was also the subject of a portrait by the American artist Mrs R. C. Anderson, who painted under the name of M. Baynon Copeland.^[10]

Virginia “Ginny” Leigh, daughter of Claude Moss Leigh (1888-1964) and his second wife, Myrtle Johnson, was born on 14 January 1930, probably in London, and was thus only a little over three years old in this portrait. As a young woman she lived in New York with her mother and stepfather, and became a U.S. citizen.^[11] She made her debut in New York society on 22 December 1947 at the annual debutante cotillion and Christmas Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. She was widely known as the “debutante of the year,” serving on the debutante committee of the Metropolitan Opera^[12] and gracing the cover of Look magazine.^[13] In a photo taken at the time of her coming-out party, which appeared in Life magazine,^[14] she can be seen with her mother and stepfather in front of the present portrait; another photo from the same evening shows her just with her mother. After her own experience as a debutante she co-authored an article entitled “The Debutante Industry” for Collier’s magazine.^[15] She also wrote as a society columnist for the New York Sun until its demise, and in 1950 was in London writing for the Evening Standard.”^[16]

Virginia Leigh was also painted by Harrington Mann in 1935.^[17]

PROVENANCE:

Sold at Phillips, London, Modern British and Irish Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture, 8 March 1994, lot 29;

Private Collection;

Sold at Mainichi Art Auctions, Japan, 12 January 2013;

Sold at Sotheby’s, London, British & Irish Art, 23 May 2013, lot 33

EXHIBITED:

•M. Knoedler & Co., London, Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 21 June-22 July 1933, no 4

LITERATURE:

•László, Lucy de, 1933 diary, private collection

MD & KF 2013