111981

UNTRACED

Study portrait

Mrs Glen Walker Cole, née Eleanor Wickham Houghton 1932

Seated half-length slightly to the right, full face to the viewer, wearing a low-cut white blouse, an evening coat, and pearl earrings

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower left: de László / N.Y. 1932 II  

Juley negative J0058606: MRS COLE (Houghton family) The KNOLL, CORNING, N.Y.

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 72: Eleanor H. Cole        Feb. 15th 1932

This is one of five portraits de László painted of the Houghton family. He painted the sitter’s father, The Honourable Alanson B. Houghton, Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s [5800], in London in 1928. During the artist’s fourth visit to the United States he painted the sitter’s mother in 1931 [5804] and her brother, Amory Houghton [5807], and their aunt, Mrs Arthur Amory Houghton, Sr., in 1932 [5809].

Eleanor Wickham Houghton was born 13 April 1896 in New York, daughter of Alanson Bigelow Houghton and his wife Adelaide Wellington Houghton. On 2 June 1920 she married Glen Walker Cole (1895-1955), son of Chester Glen Cole (1859-1920) and Harriet W. Cole (1861-1932). There were four children of the marriage: Phyllis (born 1921), Adelaide (born 1923), Sidney (born 1927) and Eleanor (born 1932).

The sitter died on 27 February 1986, and is buried with other members of the family at Hope Cemetery, Corning, New York.

MD 2020