3870

Study portrait

Lady Stanley of Alderley, née Mary Katharine Bell 1904

Head and shoulders to the left, looking to the right, wearing a brown coat with a high collar, a pearl necklace with a pendant, drop earrings and a hat with a wide black brim and brown feathers

Oil on board, 75.2 x 47.6 cm (29 ⅝ x 18 ¾ in.)

Inscribed, lower right: László F E / Penrhos / 904 Oct

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 68: M. K. Stanley. of Alderley.^[1]  Oct 19- 1904

Private Collection

In October 1904, de László left Vienna to paint the portrait of Lord Stanley of Alderley [12808]. It was an important commission for the artist, who at the time was keen to paint the British sovereign and to find patrons in England.

De László stayed at Penrhôs, the Stanley family house by the sea outside Holyhead in Anglesey, and while executing the official portrait of Lord Stanley, for which he made a number of preparatory sketches, he also painted the present portrait of Lady Stanley. The artist would paint three further portraits of the sitter and remained close to the family over some twenty-five years.

Mary “Maisie” Katharine Bell, born on 12 November 1848, was the second daughter of Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, 1st Bt., of Washington Hall, Co. Durham. Isaac Bell was an iron master and a founder of the successful steel manufacturing company, Bell Bros., later Dorman Long. On 3 February 1873, Maisie married Edward Lyulph, Lord Stanley of Alderley, who from 1909 was styled Lord Sheffield. Together they had three sons and four daughters: Arthur Lyulph (born 1876), who succeeded as 5th Baron Sheffield of Roscommon, Edward John (born 1878), Oliver Hugh (born 1879), Henrietta Margaret (born 1875), Katherine Florence Clementine (died 1884), Sylvia Laura (born 1882), Blanche Florence Daphne (born 1884) and Beatrice ‘Venetia’ (born 1885), who would become very close to H. H. Asquith, before her marriage to E.S. Montagu. The sitter was a fierce opponent of women’s suffrage in 1911. A woman of intelligence and a distinguished hostess, she is remembered by her descendents as a warm-hearted person who put aside her own life in the First World War to preside over the family home, which was converted into a Red Cross convalescent hospital. Thereafter, Lady Stanley devoted her charitable efforts to fund-raising for the Red Cross. She died four years after her husband, on 4 January 1929.

EXHIBITED:         

•Galerie Schulte, Berlin, 1905

LITERATURE:

•Deutscher Reichsanzeiger und Preußischer Staatsanzeiger, 24 January 1905, p. 4        

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 128

•DLA091-0159, undated German press cutting

CC 2008