11384

Harriet Sarah Loyd-Lindsay, Lady Wantage, née Lloyd 1911

Seated three-quarter length in three-quarter profile to the left with her right hand to her cheek, wearing a black coat over a white high-necked blouse and a large black hat with a veil, a cross hanging on a chain round her neck, her left hand holding a prayer-book

Oil on canvas, 95.5 x 74.5 cm (37 ¼ x 29 in.)

Inscribed top left: P. A. László. / 1911. VII. / Wantage.  

Laib L5449(785) / C27(12)  Lady Wantage

NPG 1903-14 Album, p. 6, and 1907-13 Album, p. 2

Tate, London

A formal portrait of the sitter [4473], completed in 1910, was the first picture by the artist to be accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1911.

The artist and his wife Lucy regularly stayed with Lady Wantage at her home, Lockinge, near Wantage in Berkshire, and their visits are often recorded in the visitors’ book still in the possession of the family. Lucy recorded in her 1911 diary that the artist painted the sitter during a stay 10-15 September and as no other portrait has been identified it is probable that de László made a mistake with the month in his inscription on the present picture. During that visit de László also painted study portraits of Lady Jane Lindsay [13475] and Lady Susan Townley [7360], and made a sketch of Lady Wantage’s Pekinese H’Wang [110784] in the visitor’s book.

By family account, this picture was painted in one sitting on Lady Wantage’s return from church one Sunday. That she is depicted with crucifix and bible would support this. The artist often painted study portraits of his friends and family when the mood struck him.

De László had hoped the picture would be lent to an exhibition of his pictures in Paris in 1931; however, the Tate Gallery had refused the loan as the “law forbids any pictures which belong to the Nation from being sent out of the country.”^[1] The artist visited the Tate four years later and lamented, “my fine pic. of late Lady Wantage is kept in the cellar!”^[2]

For biographical notes on the sitter see [4473].

PROVENANCE:

Presented to the National Gallery, London, by the artist, 1913;

Transferred to the Tate Gallery, 1913

EXHIBITED:

•Hungarian Fine Art Society, Budapest, Winter 1911-1912, no. 151

•Thos. Agnew & Sons, London, On Behalf of the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution. Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. László, M.V.O., June-July, 1913, no. 23  

LITERATURE:

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, Vol. 106, Ph. A. von László, Bielefeld & Leipzig, 1913, ill. p. 119, pl. 134

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 267

•Hesketh Hubbard, A Hundred Years of Painting 1851-1951, 1951, ill. pl.102

•Országos Magyar Képzőművészeti Társulat (Hungarian Fine Art Society), Jubiláris téli kiállítás 1911-1912, Budapest: Singer és Wolfner, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 120-121

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 69

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 192, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1911 diary, private collection

•DLA115-0124, letter from de László to Arthur Loyd, 18 April 1931

•László, Philip de, June-November 1935 diary, private collection

KF 2014