6526

Sir Philip Sassoon, 3rd Baronet Sassoon 1915

Half-length in profile to the right, wearing a greatcoat over his service dress

Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 71.1 cm (35 x 28 in.)

Inscribed lower right: P. A. de László / 1915. II. I.

Laib L7667(396) / C24(10)  Sir P. Sassoon

NPG 1913-15 Album, p. 68

Sitter’s Book I, f. 101: Philip Sassoon Jan. 1915.

Private Collection

At the time of sitting Sassoon had recently attended the 1 December 1914 meeting at the Château Demont at Merville in France between King George V, the President of France, Raymond Poincaré, Marshal Foch and Generals Rawlinson and Joffre. He was a fluent French speaker and his connections and natural diplomacy made his presence invaluable. Soon after the meeting Sassoon was appointed as Private Secretary to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander in Chief of the British Armies in France, a post he would hold until 1919.

Lucy de László noted in her 1915 diary that the artist was painting this portrait on 30 January, indicating that he had more than one sitting as it was completed and dated 1 February. This was unusual for his war portraits as most of his sitters had only limited time to be painted while they were home on leave or about to depart for the front. As a result the present portrait is one of the artist’s most successful war portraits.

Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon was born in Paris on 4 December 1888, son of Sir Edward Albert Sassoon, 2nd Baron Sassoon and his wife Aline, daughter of Baron Gustave de Rothschild. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. A letter dated January 1908 from the sitter’s mother to de László indicates he had offered  suggestions to aid Sassoon’s move to Munich that year to improve his German.^[1] The artist may have been introduced to the Sassoons through their Rothschild connections.^[2] He painted the sitter’s uncle Baron Robert de Rothschild in 1911 [111810] and his wife, née Nelly de Beer in 1913 [4623] and 1922 [4625]. He also painted the sitter’s brother-in-law Sir George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley in 1915 [6477].  

At the age of eighteen Sassoon was able to choose to keep his French citizenship or become British and he chose the latter. He succeeded his father in 1912 and became one of the richest men in England, inheriting nearly a million pounds as well as properties in London, Sandgate, Brighton and Bombay. He also succeeded his father as MP for Hythe, serving until his death in 1939.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Sassoon was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal East Kent Yeomanry and served General Rawlinson before taking up his post with Haig. An accomplished pilot, he became Under-Secretary of State for Air 1924-29 and again from 1931-37. He was also Honorary Commodore of No. 601 Squadron RAF, known as the ‘Millionaires Squadron.’ His final government post was as Commissioner of Works from 1937-39, and he was responsible for the decoration and upkeep of all government property and some royal palaces. Under his tenure the state rooms at Hampton Court were restored and Downing Street was refurnished and hung with pictures from the National Gallery. He also worked closely with Queen Mary on several projects including the choice of hangings in the Queen’s Chapel at St James’s Palace.  

Sassoon was a connoisseur of the fine and decorative arts and his tastes were expressed at his homes Trent Park in Hertfordshire and Port Lympne near Romney Marsh in Kent. He and his sister had also been left large collections by their Rothschild grandparents and Sassoon collected French decorative arts and English 18th century paintings. He was also a patron of artists and commissioned Rex Whistler, Glyn Philpot and José Maria Sert to paint murals at Port Lympne.

He was a renowned host and there were many de László sitters among his guests: the Duke of York [9123], Lord Louis Mountbatten [3510], Lord Curzon [3890], Sir Austen Chamberlain [3797], Vita Sackville-West [7077], and Prime Ministers David Lloyd George [6076], Arthur Balfour [2707] and David Asquith and his wife Margot [9769]. Others included: Edward, Prince of Wales, George Bernard Shaw, Osbert Sitwell, Giles Lytton Strachey and Sir Harold Nicolson.

Sassoon served as a trustee of the National Gallery, Chairman of the Board from December 1932 to 1936, the Tate Gallery, the Wallace Collection, and the British School at Rome. He organised exhibitions every spring in aid of charity and these were held in his London home at 25 Park Lane. They included, ‘The Age of Walnut,’ ‘The Four Georges’ and ‘Conversation Pieces.’ The latter was held in 1930 and was the first serious exhibition of English 18th- century conversation pieces since the First World War, reviving the genre and reputation of Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) by showing fifty examples of his work.

He died 3 June 1939 at his house in Park Lane after a short illness, aged just fifty.    

PROVENANCE:

Sybil Sassoon, wife of the 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley, sister of the sitter;

By descent in the family

EXHIBITED:         

•Grosvenor Gallery, National Portrait Society, March-May 1915

•Agnew’s, London, Philip & Sybil, The World of the Sassoons, April-May 2003

•The Jewish Museum, New York, The Sassoons, 3 March-13 August 2023

•Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, 2024, no. 20

LITERATURE:  

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London 1939, p. 302

•Stansky, Peter, Sassoon, the Worlds of Philip & Sybil, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2003, p. 52 & ill. p. 54, pl. 22

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 25, fig. 13

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 149

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 91, ill. p. 90

•László, Lucy de, 1915 diary, private collection, 30 January entry, p. 47

KF 2016