10449

Mrs Philip de László, née Lucy Madeleine Guinness at Littleworth Corner 1919

Full-length in three-quarter profile looking away from the viewer, standing on green carpet near a window in a pool of sunlight, wearing a dark dress with a white collar, a long coral necklace with a tassel, holding a violin in her right hand, her left hand resting on the sideboard to her left on which stands a statue of the Virgin Mary and a decorated bowl with two yellow flowers in it; behind to her left a portrait by de László of their son Stephen in Spanish dress

Oil on canvas, 68 x 50.2 cm (26 ¾ x 19 ¾ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László. Easter 1919 [partly obscured by frame]  

Indistinctly inscribed verso: My Lucy. she loved the madonna. / she inspired me to do this / summery inspiration. / Easter 1919 / P. A. de L.

Laib L16922 (175) / C18 (14A)  Mrs. de Laszlo

NPG 1931 Album, p. 16b

Private Collection

In the autumn of 1917, de László was arrested and interned on unproven suspicion of his being an enemy alien. In May 1918, on account of his health, he was moved from Holloway Internment Camp to a nursing home in Ladbroke Gardens, Notting Hill, where he was kept under house arrest and allowed to see no-one but his wife and children. In December 1918, his solicitor Sir Charles Russell offered his country home, Littleworth Corner, at Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire to the artist and his family, where he was permitted by the Home Secretary to live on strict parole, not permitted to go more than three miles from the house.

Having been virtually deprived of the opportunity to paint or draw whilst interned, the period at Littleworth Corner between December 1918 and June 1919 was one of intense activity for de László, painting portraits and oil studies of his family. Those works count amongst the finest he ever painted of his wife and children. Their compositions are particularly sophisticated, and explore the relation of the figure to the interior, with great focus on the treatment of light. Indeed, de László called this painting “an interesting problem of light and colour.”^[1]

This picture of his wife holding her violin, with the recently painted portrait of his son Stephen in Spanish dress on the wall behind, the statue of the Madonna, the daffodils in the Chinese bowl, and the scene bathed in sunlight, is a highly evocative depiction of all that de László held dear, and missed so much, during his incarceration. The first Easter of peacetime had still not brought de László any indication of how long his ordeal would last.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [11474].

PROVENANCE:        

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:        

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Paintings by Philip A. de László, 4-16 April 1921, no. 4

•Royal Society of British Artists, One Hundred and Seventy-First Exhibition, Spring 1929, no. 200

•Victoria Art Galleries, Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., Dundee, September 1932, no. 50 

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 87

LITERATURE:        

•The Studio Magazine, London, 1920, vol. LXXX, Article pp. 100-04, ill. p. 101

•Holme, C.G. ed., Painting a Portrait by de László, in How To Do It Series nº 6, Introduction by A.L. Baldry, The Studio, 1934, ill. p. 49, pl. XIX

•De Laszlo, Sandra ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 151, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 169, ill. 96

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 121

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 180

SdeL 2008