3977

Study portrait

Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel 1900

Head-and-shoulders, three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a jacket, a red cravat and white Panama hat with a black ribbon

Oil on board, 68.6 x 48.3 cm (27 x 19 in.)

Indistinctly inscribed lower right: László F.E. / 1900 [pencil]

Sitters' Book I, opp. f. 34: E Cassel 2 Mars 1900

Private Collection

De László met the financier Sir Ernest Cassel in Rome in 1900, while he was painting Pope Leo XIII [4509] and Cardinal Rampolla [4511]. In June the same year, de László married Lucy Guinness, but their honeymoon in the Lake District was interrupted by a command from Queen Victoria to paint General Sir George White [7724], who had recently returned from the Boer War. Soon after, they received an invitation from Sir Ernest Cassel to continue their holiday at his home in Rida Furka in the Swiss Alps. There de László made this study, which was exhibited at the Fine Art Society exhibition in 1907, with one of Sir Ernest’s sister, Wilhelmina, as a pendant [4029]. In 1900, he painted a much more conservative portrait of the sitter during a brief return visit to London [12023]. He also made a formal portrait of Sir Ernest’s daughter, Maud [4030], who married Wilfrid Ashley.  

Ernest Joseph Cassel was born in 1852, the second son of Jacob Cassel and his wife Amalia Rosenheim. The Cassel family were strict orthodox Jews with a small banking business in Cologne. At the age of fourteen Cassel was apprenticed to a banking firm in Amsterdam, but two years later he left for England with only a bundle of clothes and a violin.^[1] Just over ten years later, in September 1878, he married Annette (Mary Maud), daughter of Robert Thompson Maxwell, becoming a British subject the same day. In 1879 a daughter, (Amalia Mary) Maud, was born. In 1881, after only three years of marriage, his wife died of consumption. By her dying wish, her husband converted to Catholicism. Maud also died of consumption, aged only thirty. Her elder daughter, Edwina Ashley, married Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1922 [3178] & [3510]. She was very close to her grandfather, and as a young woman often acted as hostess for him.

Ernest Cassel had remarkable financial acumen and was renowned for his absolute honesty and integrity. In England he played the leading role in the construction of the Central London underground railway and made a string of acquisitions from which grew Vickers, the foremost armaments manufacturer of the age and the Allies’ main arsenal in the First World War. Abroad, he was involved in North American and Mexican railways, as well as industrial enterprises in Sweden. He financed the construction of the Aswan dam, and set up National Banks in Egypt and Turkey.

In 1899 Queen Victoria conferred upon him Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. He later became financial advisor to King Edward VII, with whom he had established a warm friendship on the racetrack, and earned himself the nickname ‘Windsor Cassel.’ The King described him as “the cleverest head in England.” He was a considerable collector of old master paintings, furniture and objets d’art, and a talented violinist. A fearless horseman since his youth, he was a devotee of hunting. He also bred racehorses and was a keen shot.

It is estimated that in his lifetime he gave away some £2,000,000 to philanthropic causes. He founded a number of tuberculosis sanatoria and a radium institute. Many of his greatest charitable foundations were made in honour of, or in memory of, the King. Sir Ernest Cassel died at his home, Brook House, in Park Lane, London in 1921.

SOURCE: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

PROVENANCE:          

Mrs. Edward Jenkins, the sitter's niece;

Marjorie, Countess of Brecknock, daughter of Mrs. Jenkins

EXHIBITED:        

•The Fine Art Society, London, Portrait Paintings and Drawings by Philip A. László, May and June, 1907, nº 48

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur. 6-22 January 2004, nº 20

LITERATURE:        

•Rutter, Owen. Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 202, 209

•Laszlo, Sandra de, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 84, ill

CWS 2008