6827

RECTO

Lady Victoria Cavendish-Bentinck 1911

Seated half-length in semi-profile to the right, her head turned to the viewer in three-quarter profile, wearing a blue evening dress with an organza stole, her right hand raised to her breast

Oil on board, 94 x 68.6 cm (37 x 27 in.)

Inscribed lower left: P. A. László / 1911. VII.  

Laib L5290 (782) / C22 (15): Daughter of the Duchess of Portland

NPG 1903-1914 Album, p. 77

Sitters' Book I, f. 85: Victoria Bentinck July 26 - 1911 -

Studio Inventory, p. 25 (137): The Lady Victoria Cavendish Bentinck, (Lady Victoria Wemyss). Daughter of the 6th Duke of Portland, second wife of Captain Michael Wemyss.

Private Collection

The success of this portrait marked the beginning of a remarkable patronage for de László by the sitter’s father, the 6th Duke of Portland [4442]. Although in his memoirs, the Duke recalled that his own portraits were the first ones to be painted by de László, those were painted by the artist in 1912, whereas the present portrait was done in 1911, when the sitter was twenty-one years old.

Just prior to this portrait, de László painted Lady Victoria Cavendish-Bentinck wearing a stylish black hat [6829], which he rejected. The Duke noted: “This [de László] did not like at all, and he afterwards painted another [the present portrait] which gives me great pleasure.”^[1] It is also noted in the Portland Family Catalogue that the present portrait was replaced in the Duke's collection by one that was painted in 1916 [6832], hence this painting remaining in the artist’s possession until his death. This may also explain the Duke’s confusion as to which member of his family was first painted by de László. A note in the diary of the artist’s wife records that de László’s fee for the present portrait was £420.^[2]

Lady Victoria Alexandrina Violet Cavendish-Bentinck was born on 27 February 1890. She was the youngest child and only daughter of the 6th Duke of Portland, then Queen Victoria’s Master of the Horse, and his wife Winifred Dallas-Yorke. She was christened in the private chapel at Windsor Castle, with Queen Victoria standing as sponsor, and spent much of her childhood at Welbeck Abbey, the seat of the Dukes of Portland. The young Victoria, known as ‘Vera’, was educated there by a governess and often travelled abroad with her father, staying with many of the crowned heads of Europe. When she came of age in 1911, her party in the underground ballroom at Welbeck was a grand affair with many distinguished guests, including the King of Spain. The onset of the First World War saw many of her family and friends joining the war effort and she herself went to work in a munitions and aircraft factory in Chiswick.

On 25 November 1918, at Welbeck, she married the head of the Wemyss clan, Captain Michael John Erskine Wemyss of the Household Cavalry, nephew of Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Wester Wemyss. They moved to Scotland to live in Fife where they had two sons, David (born 1920), who was painted by de László in 1925 [7716], and Andrew (born 1925). In 1937 Lady Victoria was appointed as an Extra Woman of the Bedchamber to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth – her second cousin – a position she held for the rest of her life. During the Second World War, Lady Victoria chaired the Women’s Land Army for Fife and Kinross, and was an active Red Cross worker. In 1953 she was appointed C.V.O. Lady Victoria took a special interest in the Girl Guide Movement and in the Wemyss School of Needlework, originally instituted to enable the wives of the many coal miners in the area to become employed by virtue of their skills as needlewomen. She also had a passion for farming, particularly for breeding sheep and helped her husband run the Wemyss estate. Her sheep won championships all over Britain, and towards the end of her life at least one champion was brought to her bedside for inspection. Lady Victoria took a keen interest in the Welbeck Military College which became established in the main rooms of the Abbey. Captain Michael Wemyss died in 1982, but she remained sprightly for many long years of widowhood, continuing with her numerous interests and performing her duties as Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother until she was well into her nineties. She continued driving herself around her estate until she was at least one hundred years old. Lady Victoria died at home on 8 May 1994, aged one hundred and four.

Verso is a preparatory work of the German Emperor Wilhelm II [112231].

PROVENANCE:         

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:          

•The Grosvenor Gallery, 1913, no. 82

•Spink & Son Limited, Edwardian England, 6-29 October 1982, ex-cat.

•Colnaghi and the Clarendon Gallery, Society Portraits 1850-1939, 30 October-14 December, 1985, no. 72

LITERATURE :         

•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien, no. 106, Ph A. von László, Bielefeld and Leipzig (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, ill. p. 124, pl. 141

•Portland, William Arthur Cavendish-Bentinck (6th Duke), Men, Women and Things, Memories of the Duke of Portland, K.G., G.C.V.O., London, 1937, pp. 220-21

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 275  

•Lederer, Louise, “The Silver Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Portland”, Woman at Home, ill.

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 203

•László, Lucy de, 1911 diary, private collection

CC 2011