6407

Lieutenant James Robert Dundas McEwen 1915

Standing half-length to the right, wearing a greatcoat over the uniform of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, with a Scots Fusiliers cap on his head, his left hand holding his belt, a stormy landscape beyond.

Oil on canvas, 95.3 x 73.7 cm (37 ½ x 29 in.)

Inscribed lower left: P A de László / 1915 V 

Laib L7973 (877) / C17 (30): The younger McEwen 

Sitters’ Book I, f. 103: J. R. D. McEwen / May 25th 1915

Private Collection

This is one of the most successful portraits of soldiers de László painted during the First World War. He was much sought-after at the time and painted nearly eighty portraits of sons and husbands before they left for the Front, at the request of their family. According to the daughter of a sitter who was painted by de László in such circumstances,^[1] the artist painted young officers who were on leave, or before their departure for the Front for a very modest fee, about £100. Because of his excellent technique he could achieve a brilliant likeness in just one sitting which was all the time most of those soldiers would grant him. It seems, however, that de László had more than one sitting to execute the present portrait, and so to elaborate his composition. There are no sketchy areas, as in most of the artist’s wartime portraits and the artist laid emphasis on an atmospheric Scottish background, in accordance with the sitter’s roots. The sitter’s wistful sideways glance and the fact that he was killed in action the following year adds great poignancy to this portrait.

De László painted the sitter's elder brother John Helias Finnie McEwen, later Sir John McEwen, in April of the same year [6414].  

James “Jim” Robert Dundas McEwen was born on 29 July 1896 in Edinburgh, the second son of Robert Finnie McEwen and his wife Mary Frances Dundas of Marchmont, Berwickshire and Bardrochat, Ayrshire. He was educated at Horris Hill preparatory school, near Newbury, and afterwards at Eton. James McEwen had gained a place at Trinity College, Cambridge in the summer of 1914, but he postponed his entry on the declaration of war to volunteer for the Royal Scots Fusiliers, his local regiment in Ayrshire. James McEwen was known for his gentle nature, twin-like attachment to his brother John and deep love of the countryside. He was showing great promise as a bird and equine artist when tragedy struck. At the last dinner at Bardrochat on his last leave from the war, spent in the company of his parents and sister Katherine, one of the four candles persistently went out. All noticed but no one mentioned it until his father broke the silence on the road home from the station: “We will never see Jim again.”^[2] He was killed in action a month later in the final days of the battle of the Somme, near Bapaume, on 12 October 1916.

EXHIBITED:        

•National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., U.S.A., The Treasure Houses of Britain Exhibition, 3 November  1985- 16 March  1986, no. 574, ill. p. 645

LITERATURE:

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 148

•Country Life, “My favourite painting: Lord Hesketh,” 4 June 2018, ill.

We are grateful to John McEwen for the biography in this entry 

CC 2008