5237

Angus Douglas Vickers 1926

Half-length to the right, full face to the viewer, wearing a dark blue blazer, white shirt and a blue, beige and fawn striped tie, his arms crossed, against a dark background

Oil on canvas, 85.1 x 61cm (33 ½ x 24 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1926   

NPG Album 1919-25, p. 27

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 50: Angus D Vickers. Aug 11th

Private Collection

The Vickers family commissioned a number of portraits from de László, including those of the sitter's two elder brothers; Oliver in 1917 [1968], which portrait is at Eton College, and Sholto in 1923 [7555]. The artist also painted the sitter’s cousin, Anthony, in 1928 [7551] and Sholto’s son Alexander as a boy in 1935 [10281]. The present portrait was commissioned by the sitter’s father in celebration of his 21st birthday.

Angus Douglas Vickers was born 15 February 1904, the son of Douglas Vickers (1861-1937) and Katherine Adelaide Chetwynd (1860-1944). He was educated at Eton and studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. Vickers travelled widely as a banking apprentice in his youth, notably to New York in 1926 and Honolulu in 1933. On 26 January 1937 he married Phyllis Maud Francis, the daughter of Norton Francis CMG, at St Mary’s, Merivale, Christchurch, New Zealand. They had no children.  

Vickers served in the Royal Air Force (TA) as 2nd Lieutenant in 1939 and after the war, from 1946-68,  was an underwriter at Lloyds and a Justice of the Peace in Ross and Cromarty. He inherited Castle Tulloch from the widow of the 6th Davidson of Tulloch in 1920 and was a member of the Royal Company of Archers (Queen's Body Guard for Scotland).  

In 1968 Vickers left Scotland to live in Portugal where he and his wife helped found and sustain a small international school in the Algarve. They also restored a villa to be used as a holiday home for visiting British Chaplains in the Algarve.

Angus Vickers died in Lisbon July 1990.

The Vickers family were also patrons of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and James Jebusa Shannon (1862-1923). A portrait of the sitter and his brother Sholto as young boys by Shannon is in the collection of Museums Sheffield.

PROVENANCE:  

Douglas Vickers, father of the sitter

KF 2012