3534

Lady Apsley, née Viola Emily Mildred Meeking 1924

Seated half-length slightly to the left, head turned in three-quarter profile and looking right, wearing a sleeveless green silk evening dress, a pale grey stole draped over her white opera gloves, a long necklace of jade beads, held in her right hand on which she wears a jade bracelet, her left hand resting in her lap

Oil on canvas, 92 x 71.1 cm (36 ¼ x 28 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1924   

Laib L11584 (799) / C1 (26) Lady Apsley

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 40: Viola Apsley May 22. 1924.

Private Collection

This portrait was a gift from the Vale of the White Horse Hunt, the tenants of Cirencester Park and townspeople of Cirencester to Lord Apsley [2023] on the occasion of his wedding to the sitter. The portrait was painted after the wedding and the composition was heavily influenced by her mother-in-law Lady Bathurst [3544] who then took the matter in hand: “Please do not paint her in a riding habit or her wedding dress. She has a lovely evening dress, green shot with silver, another all silver and you could paint her in any other colour or even in her wedding dress (without the wreath and veil) but I do think it is important not to have hats or things that look wrong in a few years and even a wreath worn low over the eyes as it is now will look absurd in a few years.” After she made very clear what she did not want, Lady Bathurst went on to say: “The portraits of me and of our daughter will look as well with all the ancestors so we want Viola Apsley’s to be the same.”^[1] It seems that neither the sitter nor de László dared oppose these firm views, as the artist depicted her in the green dress. following Lady Bathurst’s suggestion.

The portrait was withdrawn from the French Gallery exhibition a few days before it closed so that it could be shown in Cirencester to the contributors at Lord Apsley’s garden party, where he was to entertain “two to three thousand people.”^[2]

De László painted the sitter again two years later in her riding habit [3537], as a pair to her sister Lady Somers’ three-quarter length portrait [7187]. He also painted several other members of the Bathurst family including her husband [2023] in 1919, and a double portrait of their children, Lord Henry and the Honourable George Bathurst, in 1936 [3539].

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [3537].        

PROVENANCE:

Presented to Lord Apsley;

By descent;

Offered Christie’s, London, 22 April 2020

EXHIBITED:          

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies By Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June, 1924, no. 15

LITERATURE:

•The Times, 25 June 1924

•The Morning Post, 25 June 1924

•The Illustrated London News, 26 June 1924, ill.

•“Society Women Seen by a Great Painter: de Laszlo Portraits,” The Illustrated London News, 5 July, 1924, p. 20, ill.

•“Faces,” Time Magazine, 18 August 1924

•Women’s Journal, March 1927, cover ill.

•Woman’s Journal, vol. I, no. 5, March 1928, front cover, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 188

•DLA117-0065, letter from the Secretary of the Cirencester Town Committee to de László, 2 February 1924

•DLA055-0075, letter from Lady Bathurst to de László, 6 March 1924

•DLA055-0080, letter from Lady Bathurst to de László, 1 July 1924

KF 2020