7048

POSTHUMOUS 

Baron Bruni von Schröder between 1915 and 1917

Bust-length slightly to the left, full face and looking to the right, wearing a dark suit, white shirt with a blue tie and a pink carnation in his button-hole

Oil on canvas, 77.5 x 65 cm (30 ½ x 25 ½ in.)

Private Collection

The Schröder family were close friends of the de László family from the start of their patronage in 1909 until the artist’s death in 1937. Baron Bruni’s father Bruno von Schröder [6945] was born in Hamburg but lived with his wife Emma [6942] and family in London and the sitter was born there 5 January 1895.  In the summer of 1914, after graduating from Eton, Bruni was serving an apprenticeship at his uncle’s merchant bank in Hamburg, Gebrüder Schröder. War was declared 4 August between England and Germany and he found himself unable to return to England. He was called up and became a lieutenant in the 18th Mecklenburg Dragoons, the same regiment in which his father and Uncle Ernst [111451] had served. On 25 September 1915 he was declared missing presumed dead at Pogost on the Russian front (now Belarus).

De László painted from life and was always reluctant to paint posthumous portraits from photographs. He did not consider the results successful and rarely signed these portraits as is the case with the present picture. Those he painted were for close friends, particularly those who had lost a son during the First World War: Prince Maurice of Battenberg [3501] for Princess Henry of Battenberg [3485]; Major Lord Charles Mercer Nairne [11578], second son of Lord [5960] and Lady Lansdowne [5969]; Lieutenant Arthur Burn [111215] for Lord Leith of Fyvie; and Robert Palmer, the second son of the Earl of Selborne [6965].

CWS & KF 2020