6145

Preparatory work

The Viscountess Castlereagh, née the Honourable Edith Chaplin  c. 1913

Standing three-quarter length in profile to the right, her head turned and looking back towards the viewer, wearing a long white gown with a blue sash around her waist and a matching band in her hair, holding a cutting whip in her hands, a lurcher standing just beside, all against a landscape background

Oil on board, 73.6 x 51.5 cm (29 ⅛ x 20 ⅛ in.)

Studio Inventory, p. 38 (198): The Marchioness of Londonderry. Study for the portrait in the possession of Lord Londonderry.

Private Collection

This preparatory sketch shows de László’s first concept for the three-quarter length portrait of Lady Castlereagh 6142]. The dress and hair style were worn by the sitter to the ‘Hundred Years Ago Ball’ held at the Albert Hall 19 July 1912 to commemorate the ball held on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. It also draws inspiration from a portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the Londonderry collection of Amelia, wife of the 2nd Marquess, painted in 1793-4.

A few months after the study was painted Lord and Lady Castlereagh wrote to de László asking him to portray her in a different dress and with a different hairstyle: “Lord Castlereagh says that he himself is quite convinced that he would rather, as he can only have one picture, have me painted in the red dress as he knows and sees me, and not in the fancy head dress, and do you know, I rather agree with him, not that we don’t both like the idea of your sketch enormously.”^[1] 

The whip held by Lady Castlereagh in the present picture and the finished portrait was given to her husband’s ancestor, Frances Anne Vane-Tempest, by the Prince Regent on the occasion of her wedding to Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess Londonderry on 3 April 1819. It was mounted with a gold-framed quizzing glass and is still in the collection at Mount Stewart.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [6142].

PROVENANCE:

In the possession of the artist on his death;

Christie’s, London, 13 June 1997, lot 60;

Viscount Rothermere;

Sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 14 October 2004, lot 44;

Acquired by Lady Mairi Bury, daughter of the sitter

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1939, p. 277

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 134-35, ill. 80

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 102

•Field, Katherine, Philip Alexius de László; 150th Anniversary Exhibition, de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 20

•Field, Katherine ed., Gábor Bellák and Beáta Somfalvi, Philip de László (1869-1937); "I am an Artist of the World", Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2019, p. 39

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 54

•DLA061-0052, letter from Lady Castlereagh to de László, 10 October 1912

CC 2011

KF 2018