10040

Mrs Frank Thring, née Olive Kreitmeyer 1932

Half-length to the right, almost full face to the viewer and looking left, wearing dark wrap with a white lining over a brown dress and a two-strand pearl necklace

Oil on canvas, 89 x 71 cm (35 x 28 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1933

Laib L17688(484) / C26(36)  Mrs. Thring

NPG 1932 Album, p. 33

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 74: Olive Thring / Australia Dec. 23rd 1932.

Private Collection

This portrait was painted in de László’s London studio, while the sitter and her husband were visiting from Australia. Frank Thring was then head of Efftee Studios and was promoting their films in England. The artist made a preparatory drawing of him in 1935 [7345] but a finished portrait is not known.

Olive Marguerite Kreitmeyer was born in 1887 in Collingwood, Victoria, Australia to Maximillian Ludwig Kreitmayer (1830-1906) of Munich and his English wife Harriett Watts (born 1860). She married Francis William Thring (1883-1936) in 1921 and their son Francis ‘Frank’ was born in 1926.

Frank William Thring Senior is credited with introducing talking pictures to Australia and was an outspoken advocate for a quota system to ensure the expansion of the country’s film industry.

Frank Junior was an actor and recalled his earliest memory as being of his mother standing on a stepladder and arranging flowers in the foyer of the Regent Theatre in Melbourne. He married Joan Cunliffe, who was the manager of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev.

Olive Thring died in Melbourne 21 March 1953.

PROVENANCE:

Joan Thring, daughter-in-law of the sitter;

Sold Bonham’s, Knightsbridge, 18 March 2014, lot 168

KF 2018