ART EXHIBITION. PORTRAITS BY LÁSZLÓ

Mr. Philip A. de László, whose portraits people–the word is used advisedly–the French Gallery, 120, Pall Mall, has great fluency and facility. He can fill a canvas and furnish a room. His designs never look “skimpy,” and though his people seldom advance beyond their frames they come well up to the surface of the wall and take the eye without shrinking. Consequently his great popularity as a portrait painter in this country can be explained without exaggerated claims for him or implied criticism of his patrons. To put it as broadly as possible he overcomes the natural reserve of English people, and says things about them to their advantage in paint that they would not care to say about themselves. He shows them off at their best, as everybody in his heart of hearts likes to be shown off, and he is able to do it with all the better grace because he is a foreigner with a genuine appreciation of our qualities. As when an enthusiastic foreigner talks to English people about themselves, Mr. de László’s manner and he has a good deal of manner, is transferred to his English sitters, making them realize their possibilities rather more dramatically than they would without his encouragement.

To glance round the room is to receive an impression of English men and women in many walks of life playing their parts with more conviction than they would show off the canvas. Every look and action is a little heightened with a dramatic purpose: the judicial air of “His Honour Judge Turner [11385]”; the Frontier look in the eyes of “Sir John Maffey, K.C.V.O., Chief Commissioner, N.W. Frontier, India [6251]”; the gesture with his binoculars of “Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, R.N. [5990]”; the abstraction of “Sir Ernest Rutherford, professor of Physics, Cambridge [6819].” The sitters are, if not more like themselves, at any rate more like what they are by vocation than they would probably appear in real life at any but exceptional moments. They act themselves. “The Right Hon. Viscount Devonport [4573],” with his gun, is by chance hung beside “Master Henry Dalrymple White [4629],” with his bow and arrows; and man and boy display an almost equal zest in the game.

In the same way as Mr. de László dramatizes vocation, as Englishman feel it but would not care to say, he dramatizes good looks in women. He can, for example, pay women on canvas the anatomical compliments which, though always forgiven, are not easily made acceptable in words. He does not so much flatter as appreciate, and, above all, he appreciates the intention in costume and its wearing which is so often spoiled in the accidents of life and movement. One feels that “Mrs. Crookshank [4130],” “Baroness Robert de Rothschild [4625],” “H.M. the Queen of Rumania [3200],” “The Lady Apsley [3534],” and “The Hon. Mrs. Esmond Harmsworth [4770],” to name five of the most decorative, would be less than human if they did not like the way they are presented – though “produced” were almost the better word, because the art consists in bringing out to advantage that is already there, though it is apt to be obscured in the give and take of social intercourse.

Every artist must be judged by his general intentions, and it would be unreasonable to expect in Mr. de László any great depth of penetration into character, in the psychological meaning, or any great subtlety in its expression. He is, in a quite inoffensive sense of the word, a “showy” painter, as a tulip is a showy flower, as Lawrence was a showy painter. It is not likely that any future biographer will pore upon one of Mr. de László’s portraits for evidence of character; but it is more than likely that future historians will accept him as a good guide to social appearance – how well-known English men and women looked, bore themselves, and wore their clothes at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is concerned with the contemporary pageant of life. Not that he loses likeness in decoration; his great gift is to present likeness at happy moments. When the occasion demands, and allows, a studied representation of personality, as in the portrait of “Pius XI., P.M. [6690],” painted for Oxford University, Mr. de László can go beyond the moment and produce a work which expresses the character, and the weight and dignity of the office, behind the appearance, in a stable composition. “His Honour Judge Turner [11385],” “The Right Hon. The Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G., P.C. [5959],” “John Walter, Esq. [7651],” and “Sir Ernest Rutherford [6819]” are examples of Mr. de László’s ability to realize character in men without going beyond the evidence of feature and expression. As might be expected of his general powers, Mr. de László is particularly happy in the rapid sketch portrait, and of this “Lady Eileen Scott [6348]” and “The Marchesa della Torretta [2340]” are good examples.

09/02/2008