11580

Anne Mabel Olivia Trouton 1910

Seated three-quarter length to the right, full-face to the viewer, wearing blue jacket over a white dress with a frilled collar and cuffs, a straw hat with a white frilled lining and holding a basket on her knee containing cornflowers and grasses

Oil on board, 91 x 71 cm (35 ⅝ x 27 ⅝ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P.A. László 1910. V. / London

Laib L4583 (783) / C27 (19): Miss Trouton

NPG 1903-14 Album, p. 54

NPG 1907-13 Album, p. 7

Private Collection

This  portrait is reminiscent of English 18th century children’s portraiture, which emphasized the innocence and childish grace of its sitters. George Romney’s portrait of Marianne Holbech, clutching her dog in her lap, is a particularly close comparison.^[1] De László was especially creative in his compositions for portraits of children and von Schleinitz wrote: “it is in this very branch of art that the Master always has something new to say, and we also see the way in which he loves children and can empathize with them and understand them, and thus express their feelings.”^[2] 

The artist’s wife Lucy recalled that the portrait was finished 4 June 1910 and that the artist remarked: “This is one of the best things I’ve done.”^[3] De László maintained this opinion for the rest of his life and included the portrait in his final exhibition of portraits at the Wildenstein Gallery, London, which opened two days after his death on 23 November 1937.

Lucy was a cousin of the sitter’s father Professor Frederick Trouton [5468] on the Guinness side and the families became very close after the de Lászlós’ move to England in 1907. De László painted or drew many of the Troutons between 1908 and 1915. Four of these were made in 1915 and show the sitters in uniform, including Olive’s three eldest brothers, Frederick [7519], Desmond [11593] and Maurice [7521] and her father’s brother Doctor Gardiner William Trouton [7517]. He also made a portrait drawing of her father in 1908 [5468], an almost full-length portrait of her mother with her sisters Ruth and Mary [7488] and a study of her and her sisters [7529], both 1915. A study of the sitter [11848] is dated 1915, but shows her in the same costume as the present picture and was most likely a preparatory work which de László gave to the family and inscribed at that later date.  

Anne Mabel Olivia ‘Olive’ Trouton was born on 27 November 1900, in Dublin, the eldest daughter of Professor Frederick Trouton (1863-1922) and his wife Annie Fowler (1864-1928). She had four elder brothers: Frederick (born 1892), Desmond (born 1893), Maurice (born 1895) and Rupert (born 1897), and two sisters: Ruth (born 1904) and Mary (born 1906). The two eldest brothers were killed in France in the First World War and Maurice in London during German bombings in 1944.

Olive Trouton trained as an architect, and 18 May 1929 married a fellow architect, Adrian Albert van Montagu (1901-1994). Their son John Patrick was born in 1930. They collaborated with Barbara Acworth, designing domestic architecture and public houses for the Taylor Walker brewing company. They lived first in Bloomsbury, but moved in with Barbara Acworth in Hampstead during the Second World War. In 1953 they moved to Chesham, Buckinghamshire. Olive continued to work informally as an architect, designing for friends and family, and for Henry de Laszlo, the artist’s eldest son, who had spent much time staying with the Trouton family in childhood and to whom he was particularly close. 

She died at home on 1 October 1986, at Braziers End, Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the family;

Sold at Christie’s, London, 12 December 2019, lot 165

EXHIBITED:

•Agnew’s, London, Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. Laszlo, May-June 1911, no. 2

•Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., Exhibition of Paintings by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., November-December 1937, no. 34

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 47

LITERATURE:      

•Vita d’Arte, Fourth Year, vol. VII, no. 39, March 1911, Siena: L. Lazzeri, 1911, pp. 104-108, ill.

•The Illustrated London News, 3 June 1911, p. 843, ill.

•The Illustrated London News, New York Edition, Summer Number, 17 June 1911, p. 907, ill.

•The Studio Vol. LIII (53), 1911, pp. 260-269, ill. p. 262

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, no. 106. Ph. A. von László, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, p. 118, ill., pl. 132,

•Mainar, Rafael, “Felipe A. László,” Museum: Revista Mensual de Arte Español Antiguo y Moderno y de la Vida Artistica Contemporanea (Barcelona), Third Year, vol. III, no. 8, 1913, p. 296, ill.  

•The Times (London), 23 November 1937, p. 12

•The Listener, vol. 18,  no. 464, 1 December, 1937, p. 1177

•The Art News, vol. 36, no. 10, 4 December, 1937, p. 20

•The New York Times, Rotogravure Section, 5 December 1937

•Baldry, A. L., “Philip A. de László: An Appreciation,” The London Studio, February 1938, p. 85

•Képes Hét, vol. I, issue 2, 1 October 1911, p. 43, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1910 diary, private collection, 24 January entry, p. 8; 4 June entry, p. 44; 13 June entry, p. 48

KF 2018