2456

Doctor Alfred Cort Haddon 1925

Seated three-quarter length in a green upholstered carved wooden armchair, head turned and looking to the right, wearing a black academic gown over a dark suit with waistcoat and watch chain and holding a human skull on his right knee with both hands; a deep turquoise blue hanging above and to the left

Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 85.8 cm (43 ½ x 33 ¾ in.)

Inscribed, lower left: de László. 1925.

NPG Album 1919-25, f. 28: Prof. Haddon

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 43: Alfred C. Haddon 20 February 1925

Haddon Library, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

This portrait was presented to the Cambridge Anthropological Museum by de László in 1925. He offered it to the museum following the commission of another portrait of Dr Haddon by friends and pupils for Christ’s College, Cambridge [2458], on the occasion of the sitter’s seventieth birthday.^[1] De László painted a further portrait of Haddon in the same year; which he gave to the sitter’s family [110647]. A study portrait of the sitter was in the artist’s studio on his death, but remains untraced [3133].

The eminent anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon was born in London in 1855, the son of devout Baptists John Haddon^[2] and his wife Caroline Waterman.^[3] He had a disrupted school education and despite his efforts to take to the family printing business, his interest lay in the natural sciences. He entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1875, where he obtained a first class degree in the natural science tripos (comparative anatomy). He was given a grant by the university to work for six months at the Stazione Zoologica at Naples, after which he was appointed curator of the Zoological Museum at Cambridge, and a university demonstrator in zoology. In 1880 he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the Royal College of Science and Assistant Naturalist to the Science and Art Museum in Dublin. While doing pioneer work there in the scientific classification of sea anemones, he developed an ethnographical interest in western Irish life.  

Between 1888 and 1889 he made zoological and ethnographical investigations in the Torres Straits. Consequently in 1898-99, he organised and conducted a Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits, New Guinea and Sarawak.  

From 1900 he was University Lecturer and later Reader in Ethnology at Cambridge until 1926. He was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1902-3, and of the Antiquarian Society and the Folk-Lore Society.

In 1881 Haddon married Fanny E. Rose and there were three children of the marriage, a son and two daughters. They lived in a large house in Cranmer Road, Cambridge, filled with trophies from his many travels. He loved his garden, sharing his enthusiasm with visitors. His son described his father as having an acute and inquiring mind with a keen sense of humour, and as bringing a breath of fresh air into a static and staid society.^[4]  For his seventieth birthday, he insisted on his wife and daughters’ presence in the dining hall at Christ’s. According to the Royal Society’s obituary of Haddon: “that was the first occasion on which women dined in the College Hall, a highly suitable acknowledgement of Haddon’s long efforts to secure that scientific consideration should not be limited by sex classification”.  

After his wife had suffered a stroke, he nursed her until her death in 1937. He died in Cambridge in 1940.  His son Ernest Balfour Haddon followed his father’s profession.

PROVENANCE:

Presented by de László to the Haddon Library, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, 1925

EXHIBITED:                

•Dolls & Richards, London. Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 1-10 October 1925, no. 11

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York. Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 19-31 October 1925, no. 10

•The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Special Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 5- 27 December 1925, no. 14

•Baltimore Museum of Art. Special Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O. 31 December 1925–10 January 1926, no. 14

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1927

•Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Autumn Exhibition, 1927, no. 940

•Christie’s, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 100

•Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, 2024, no. 14

LITERATURE:        

•Christ's College Magazine, Vol. XXXIV no. 108, Lent Term 1926, p. 185

•The Illustrated London News, 6 August 1927, p. 220, ill.

•Christ’s College Magazine, vol. LX (3) no. 193, May 1968

•Christ's College Magazine, no. 221, 1996, p. 28

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 359

•A. H. Quiggin, Haddon the Head-Hunter, Cambridge University Press, 1942, pp. 144, 146

•Man, vol. XXV, no. 7. London: The Royal Anthropological Institute, July 1925, p. 96, ill.

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 165, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 233

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 75, ill. p. 74

CWS & CC 2008