3547

Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Robert Stephen Balfour 1922

Head and shoulders slightly to the right, head turned full face and looking to the viewer, wearing a grey suit jacket and waistcoat, blue shirt with gold collar studs and a russet tie

Oil on canvas, 66 x 49.2 cm (26 x 19 ⅓ in.)

Inscribed lower left: In Souvenir your friend. / de László 1922 July.

Laib L11113(433) / C4(23A)  

NPG Album 1921-1925, f. 3

Sitters’ Book II, f. 31: F. R. S. Balfour July 13th. [among other signatures dated 1922]

Private Collection

The Balfours were close friends of the de László family and in June 1922 the artist went to stay at Dawyck, their estate in Scotland. There he painted the present portrait and two head studies of the sitter’s daughter Jean [3554] [3558]. According to his son Alastair, when the artist was staying he always asked if any woodcock had been recently shot as he used the pin feathers for painting the eyes in his portraits.^[1] 

In 1920 the sitter wrote to de László: “How very kind of you to give us that charming photograph of your picture. It will hang near my writing desk at Dawyck and be a constant reminder of a friendship we prize so greatly.”^[2] Though the picture referred to is not identified, the artist is known to have presented signed photographs of his Uffizi self-portrait [9724] to friends and family.

De László painted the sitter’s wife Gertrude [2139] in 1920 and his sister Margaret in 1917 [6436], having painted her husband Captain Thomas Nelson [6433] who was killed in 1916. His son Alastair was painted in 1931 [3551] as a twenty-first birthday gift.

After de László’s death in 1937 the sitter, who the artist referred to as Fred, wrote to The Times: “To those who have enjoyed the intimacy of Philip László his passing is a sore break. No one had more generous appreciation of his friends; indeed, for many there are delightful examples of this generosity in the portraits of themselves or their children hanging upon their walls. We can remember the blank canvases he gave for the Red Cross sales at Christie’s. To few is it given to receive in their lifetime the acknowledgment of genius by people of all countries alike. He was one of those who were requested to paint their self-portraits for the Pitti – a distinction shared by few artists. The somewhat grudging recognition and trite criticism by British contemporary artists may or may not reflect the judgment of their successors, but that his pictures give us vivid presentations of the men and women of many nations who have made the history of the last 30 years is indisputable. The mark of the magician was surely that he painted with a speed and a certainty portraits that give intense pleasure to those who possess them, reflecting as they do the true inmost character of the sitters. His treatment at the time of the War spy mania it makes us blush to remember. It was always a delight to hear him speak of the friends who stood by him at that unhappy time; of them, two of his own craft, Sargent and Lavery, were among the foremost. Of the romance of his marriage and of the beauty of his home life we must not speak. His simplicity of character and the warmth of his friendship will never be forgotten by those who loved him.”^[3]

Frederick Robert Stephen Balfour was born 11 March 1873 at Mount Alyn, Denbighshire, the eldest son of Alexander Balfour (1824-1886) and his wife Janet Roxburgh (1844-1923). He was educated at Loretto in Edinburgh and Trinity College, Oxford, and after graduation travelled to the Pacific coast of North America, where he spent four years researching forestry and arboriculture. In 1916 he served as a member of the Home Grown Timber committee and was sent by the War Office to act as liaison officer to the French Government for Army timber supplies and was later awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour by the Royal Horticultural Society. He was a member of the King’s Scottish Bodyguard from 1900, a Director of the Guardian Assurance Company, Cable and Wireless Ltd., London Committee Bank of Montreal.

In 1904 he married Gertrude Norman, daughter of Frederick H. Norman (1839-1916), of Moor Place, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, and his wife Lina Collet (1851-1950). Her brothers, Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England [6464] [6465] and Ronald Norman [6469] were painted in 1919 and 1921 respectively. There were two children of the marriage: Alastair Norman (born 1909) and Jean Penelope (born 1907).

In 1897 Frederick purchased the Dawyck estate on the Scottish Borders, which had been an arboretum for over two centuries. He continued the expansion and improvement of the estate and in 1978 his son gifted the arboretum to the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. De László and his wife Lucy visited Dawyck at least three times: 1922, July 1930 and May 1935.

The sitter died in Westminster 2 February 1945.

PROVENANCE:

A gift from the artist to the sitter

LITERATURE:

•DLA055-0032, letter from Frederick Balfour to de László, 27 February 1920  

KF 2021