3046
UNTRACED
Countess Curzon of Kedleston, née Grace Elvina Hinds c. 1917
Standing three-quarter length in profile to the left, head turned and looking to the viewer, wearing evening dress with a chiffon stole draped around her, her hair in a chignon with a tiara or floral bandeau, and wearing drop pearl earrings
Oil on canvas, 108 x 76.2 cm (42 ½ x 30 in.)
Studio Inventory, p. 3 (16): The Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston. Painted in 1917/18. Second wife of the First Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
De László painted a portrait of the sitter in mourning dress in 1916, as the widowed Mrs Alfred Duggan [3015]. In the sitter’s memoirs, she recalled: “a full-length of me in a white evening dress, wearing a tiara [sic]. It was thought a good likeness, and generally admired, but George [the sitter’s husband] never cared for it.”[1] It is assumed, pending further evidence, that the painting described is the present portrait. A press account of a royal garden party at Buckingham Palace in 1919 noted that Lady Curzon was there and, “in cream satin and lace, looked exactly like her portrait by Laszlo.”[2]
It is likely that this portrait was painted in the months prior to the artist’s arrest in September 1917, commissioned by the sitter’s husband for their marriage. She was also painted by John Singer Sargent[3] in 1925 and by Sir John Lavery in the early 1920s. However, Curzon angrily refused to buy the latter’s portrait as he felt he had attempted to flatter her curvaceous figure unnecessarily.[4] Lord Curzon preferred the mourning picture, which accounts for the present portrait remaining unsigned in the artist’s studio until his death.
De László painted two portraits of the sitter’s husband, George, then Earl Curzon of Kedleston, both in 1913. The large formal one [3890] is at All Souls College, Oxford and two authorised copies hang at Balliol College, Oxford and in the Eton College Collections. The second, a head-and-shoulders study portrait, remains in a private collection [3895].
For biographical notes on the sitter, see [3015].
PROVENANCE:
In the possession of the artist on his death
LITERATURE:
•Curzon of Kedleston, Grace, Marchioness. Reminiscences, London, 1955, pp. 87-8
•Abdy, Jane, The Souls, London, 1984, p. 29
CC 2008
[1] Curzon, op.cit.
[2] “Royal Court on the Lawn,” The Courier, Dundee, Thursday, 17 July 1919
[3] Collection Currier Gallery, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA , which includes two additional drawings, one in preparation for the portrait. Sargent, by then had retired, but “through the intercessions of Evan Charteris, he was persuaded to paint Gracie, and produced a most lively portrait. Curzon was modest about being painted himself; the first official portrait is a de László sketch [sic] of 1913 which hangs at Balliol” (Jane Abdy, op.cit.)
[4] David Gilmour, Curzon, London, 1994, p. 468. Lavery’s portrait of her was exhibited at The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts in 1923, no. 97, ‘Lent by the Marchioness Curzon’