5753

John Hall 1920

Half-length in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a white sailor suit with a blue collar and embroidered naval insignia on his left sleeve

Oil on canvas, 65 x 53 cm (25 ½ x 20 ⅞ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1920. VI. 

Laib L14933(410) / C11(32)  

NPG Album 1919-25, p. 2

Sitters’ Book II, f. 15: Jack Hall July 2nd 1920.

Private Collection

Sailor’s dress for children was popularised by Franz Winterhalter’s portrait of four-year-old Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, painted in 1846, in his miniature version of the uniform worn by ratings on the Royal Yacht. The image was disseminated in print and widely copied. De László painted many portraits of children dressed in this manner, including his own children:  Henry in 1906 [5226], Stephen in 1910 [6530], Paul in 1913 [8309], Patrick in 1916 [11698] and John in 1919 [8450].

De László painted pendant portrait of the sitters parents in 1919 [5739] and 1923 [5747] and portrait drawings of two of the sitter’s brothers, Thomas in 1922 [5755] and Philip Roderick [5750] in 1935, and their sister Judy, in 192l [5756].

John ‘Jack’ Hall was born 5 April 1912 at Byfield, Great Budworth, Cheshire, the eldest of six children of John Hall VII (1870-1930) and his wife Jean Isobel Nesbitt (1888-1971). He attended St. Neot’s Preparatory School, Basingstoke, Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Modern History. He was an engineer and an accomplished mountaineer. On 9 June 1934 he died aged twenty-two in an accident, attempting to climb into the window of his mother’s top floor flat at 43 Lowndes Square. He had returned from holiday in Germany and found he had been locked out by his mother’s friends who had borrowed the property. The coroner ruled that: “It was a dreadful tragedy that he should have lost his life in that way. But what for some might seem foolhardy was probably not so to a skillful climber, who would regard it as a piece of fun.”^[1]

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the family

KF 2019