3637

Marjory and Elizabeth Buchanan 1923

Seated three-quarter length on a small sofa, wearing evening dress, Elizabeth has her hand on the shoulder of Marjory, who wears a blue stole and holds two blue irises in her hands

Oil on canvas, 125.8 x 100.4 cm (49 ½ x 39 ½ in.)

Inscribed top right: de László / 1923 / London   

Laib L11282 (451) / C4 (14A)  

NPG 1923 Album, p. 37

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 38: Marjory Buchanan - 23rd October 1923 / Betty Buchanan -23rd October 1923.

Private Collection

A first studio appointment between de László and the Buchanan sisters was arranged for 23 October 1923. Although Marjory and Elizabeth Buchanan were respectively aged twenty-eight and twenty-four, they were chaperoned by their mother, Mrs. Charles Buchanan, to the artist’s studio: “I hope to take the daughters out to you about ten o’clock on that day.”^[1]

In a letter^[2] following this initial meeting, it seems that de László enquired about the dresses his sitters were considering wearing during the sittings, to which Mrs. Charles Buchanan replied: “As to the dresses, I don’t know if you have forgotten, or if you have changed your mind, but when we saw you, you draped pieces of material round my daughters’ shoulders and chose a cream broché or silk material for the red hair one and a blue for the other and said they need not bring any special frocks as they would be painted in those which you laid aside.”^[3]

De László’s intention probably was to drape the fabric directly onto his sitters’ body so as to create dresses for them. In this respect, it is worth noticing that the blue fabric used in the final portrait is the one de László used to make a striking sheath dress for Princess Boncompagni [110907]. Marjory and Elizabeth’s mother was known for being prudish, see [3642], and she may well have suggested that the fabric would be better used as stoles rather than as clinging drapes. This might also explain the relative stiffness and restraint in the girls’ poses. In any case, de László eventually used the blue fabric for Marjory, on the left, and cream tones for Elizabeth, and not the other way round, as originally planned.

Marjory Murray Buchanan was born in 1895, daughter of Charles A. Buchanan and his wife Mary Catherine Kay. She had an older brother Edmund, born in 1893 and a younger sister Elizabeth. Marjory was educated at Northlands School in Virginia Water, Surrey, where her German headmistress, Sophie Weisse [2097] inspired her and her sister’s love of music, which became a lifelong interest. The sitter joined the V.A.D. and served as a nurse in France during the First World War. In December 1926 Marjory married John Agnew-Wallace, a fellow officer of her elder brother Edmund Pullar Buchanan of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He was wounded in the First World War but survived and was awarded the Military Cross. After the war they lived in Jamaica, India and China. From 1955 they lived at Lochryan House, Cairnryan, Wigtownshire, the Agnew-Wallace family home and they had a son Malcolm.^[4]  Marjory took great interest in her garden; the mild climate allowed her to grow rare and interesting plants. She died in 1979 in Ayrshire.

For biographical notes on Elizabeth Buchanan, please refer to entry [3639].

EXHIBITED:          

•Victoria Art Galleries, Dundee, Exhibition of recent Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de Laszlo, M.V.O., September 1932, no. 29

LITERATURE:

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 214-215

•DLA055-0014, letter from Mrs. Charles Buchanan to de László, 24 September 1923

•DLA055-0020, letter from Mrs. Charles Buchanan to de László, 14 October 1923

CC 2008