111970

Mrs George Whitney, née Martha Bacon 1926

Seated half-length to the right, head turned full face looking to the viewer, wearing an evening dress and a stole, touching her right shoulder with her right hand

Oil on canvas, 102.9 x 76.8 cm (40 ½ x 30 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1926 / II

Juley negative J0058599

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 47: Martha B. Whitney  Feb. 8th 1926.

Private Collection

De László painted a study portrait of the sitter’s father Colonel Robert Bacon [2701] in 1910, when he was serving as the United States Ambassador to France (1909-1912). Bacon had hoped his daughter could be painted at the same time. However, the artist only had two days in Paris and his priority was to complete Colonel Bacon’s portrait together with a study portrait of former President Theodore Roosevelt [5205].^[1] Still anxious for the commission to be carried out, Bacon asked the artist again in a letter of 19 October 1910,^[2] and once more the following month: “I hope that some day we shall find time for you to paint my daughter.”^[3] 

It was during his third trip to America that de László finally painted the present portrait. Martha was by then married to George Whitney. The artist arrived in New York on board the Aquitania on 16 October 1925, and the demand for his portraits being so great, he remained until April 1926. He painted the sitter in February 1926, shortly after painting her sister-in-law, the widowed Mrs Elliott Cowdin Bacon, née Hope Norman [110510].

A rejected version of this portrait shows that the artist originally conceived it in profile and looking full face [111964] before adopting the present composition. The sitter’s mother was evidently pleased as de László’s reply to her (now lost) letter reveals: “It is certainly a great pleasure and satisfaction to me to know that you think I have succeeded in immortalizing the great womanly charm and fine character of Mrs. Whitney.”^[4]

Martha Beatrix Bacon was born 4 July 1890 in Boston, Massachusetts, the only daughter of the four children of Colonel Robert Bacon and Martha Waldron Cowdin. Both her parents had ancestors among the early settlers: in Massachusetts on her father’s side, whilst her mother had roots in New York. Martha was educated at St. Timothy’s School, Stevenson, Maryland. On 10 May 1911, while her father was Ambassador to France, she was Presented at Court in London to King George and Queen Mary.^[5] 

On 2 June 1914 the sitter married George Whitney (1885-1963), son of George and Elizabeth Whitney of Boston, at the Church of the Advent, Westbury, Long Island.^[6] The following year Whitney joined the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co., from which he retired as chairman of the board in 1955. Around 1915, the couple built a house, “Home Acres,” designed by Delano and Aldrich, on her father’s estate, “Old Acres,” Westbury, Long Island. They also owned a townhouse in New York at East 74th St South Side. George and Martha Whitney had four children: George Jr. (born c. 1915), Robert (born 1917), Martha Phyllis (born 1918), and Elizabeth (born 1921).

Martha Whitney was committed to a number of concerns, being particularly active in the New York Public Library, the Speedwell Society, the English-Speaking Union, Planned Parenthood, the Woman’s National Farm and Garden Association and the Nassau Hospital, Mineola.

The sitter died at the Nassau Hospital on 16 October 1967,^[7] having outlived her husband by four years.

LITERATURE:

•DLA053-0018, letter from Robert Bacon to de László, 19 October 1910

•DLA053-0017, letter from Robert Bacon to de László, 29 November 1910

•DLA121-0037, letter from de László to Mrs. Robert Bacon, 26 October 1925

•DLA121-0039, letter from de László to Mrs. Robert Bacon, 4 March 1926

MD 2013