2014

Muriel Thetis Wilson 1917

Half-length, slightly to the right and full-face looking to the viewer, wearing a white draped chiffon evening dress and holding an amber necklace around her neck with both hands, the necklace dissolving on the right into an indication of a stole or veil

Oil on canvas, 73.2 x 60.6 cm (29 ¼ x 24 ¼ in.)

Inscribed, lower right: Study of Miss M. Wilson / To my friend / Lockett Agnew / 1917 / P. A. László

Sitters’ Book II, f. 11: Thetis Wilson  Sept. 20.

Private Collection

William Lockett Agnew [2560], to whom the painting is inscribed, was senior partner in his family firm of art dealers and publishers in whose gallery de László exhibited three times. He was a loyal friend of the artist and a great support to him during his internment from 1917-1919.

A letter from Muriel Wilson to de László reveals that the present portrait was rejected by her: she found that although “very beautiful and full of life still,” it “made [her] rather shy!”^[1] She is wearing the same evening dress and amber beads [7759], which suggests they were both painted in January 1916. De László kept the present picture in his studio and inscribed it in 1917 when he presented it to Agnew.

The diary of Colonel Repington [6801], a friend of de László and the sitter, suggests the painting was given to Agnew in a wager.^[2] While lunching at the Ritz with de László, Lockett Agnew and McFadden, the American collector and art dealer, the artist bet Agnew £300 that the war would be over by April 1917. If de László lost he would paint Repington or a ‘Mr. X’, who the artist particularly disliked. Repington was thus to go to de László’s studio the following week, but there is no further mention of the matter in his diaries and it seems de László did not paint him before 1920, when commissioned to do so. The artist was indeed very busy at the time, and it is not unlikely that during one of his visits to de László’s studio, Agnew chose the present portrait as the reward for the bet he had won.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [7759].

PROVENANCE:

William Lockett Agnew [assumed until his death in 1918]

By descent in the Wilson family

LITERATURE:         

•Repington, Colonel, The First World War 1914-1918, II volumes, Houghton Mifflin

Co., Boston and New York, 1920, vol. I, p. 375

•Attwood, Gertrude M., The Wilsons of Tranby Croft, Hutton Press, Beverley, 1988

•Cleggett, David A.H., The Filmers and the Wilsons, 1255-1968, privately printed,

2005

•DLA085-0063, letter from Muriel Wilson to de László, undated

We are grateful to Professor A.J.A Morris and to David A.H. Cleggett, FRSA, for their help in compiling this entry

CC 2008