1222

Study portrait

Princess Xenia Georgievna of Russia 1915

Head and shoulders slightly to the right, head turned full face to the viewer, wearing a white open-necked blouse, a red ribbon tied in a bow in her long dark hair

Oil on canvas, 55.9 x 80 cm (22 x 31 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P A de László / LONDON 1915 / April 

Laib L7912(717) / C24(36): For the Princess George of Russia

NPG Album 1915-16, p. 3

Sitters’ Book I, f. 102: Ксения. / Xenia. / London. 1915 March.

Private Collection

De László also painted a portrait of the sitter’s sister Princess Nina of Russia [1225] in spring 1915. A telegram from their mother Princess Marie of Greece and Denmark dated 27 March 1915 indicates that they both visited the studio for their first sittings the next day.^[1] The portraits were photographed by Paul Laib [5994] and it is possible that prints of these were sent to the girl’s father Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia. The family found themselves separated when the First World War broke out and the sitter and her mother and sister were stranded in England. De László’s wife Lucy recorded in her diary that Queen Alexandra [7707] and her daughter, Princess Victoria [10303], came twice to watch him paint the portraits and that they were completed by 2 April 1915.^[2] 

The artist painted Princess Xenia again in 1922 [1224], after her marriage to William B. Leeds, Jr. He also painted her mother-in-law Mrs William Bateman Leeds in 1915 [6021] and again in 1922 [7809] after her marriage to Prince Christopher of Greece. The 1922 portraits were both completed while de László was staying in Cannes with Prince Christopher, where he also painted his niece, Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark [11684], and King Gustav V of Sweden [8017]. 

Princess Xenia Georgievna of Russia was born 22 August 1903 in the New Michael Palace, Saint Petersburg, the younger daughter of Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia (1863-1919) and his wife, Princess Marie of Greece and Denmark (1876-1940), first cousin of King George V of England. She was with her mother in  Harrogate during the summer of 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War. They remained in England throughout hostilities. Their father was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1919.

The sitter married William B. Leeds Jr. (1902-1971) in Paris on 9 October 1921. He was the stepson of Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark. They had one daughter, Nancy (born 1925). They lived on Long Island, New York, until their divorce in 1930. In 1946 Princess Xenia married Herman Jud and they lived at Glen Cove, Long Island, until her death in 1965.

PROVENANCE:

Grand Duchess Marie Georgievna, mother of the sitter;

The sitter;

By descent;

Sold Christie’s, King Street, 30 November 2015, lot 32

LITERATURE:

•Tantzos, G. Nicholas, ed., The Inheritors of Alexander the Great, Atlantic International Publications, New York, 1986, p. 221, ill.

•Russia, Grand Duchess George of, A Romanov Diary: The Autobiography of H.I. & R.H. Grand Duchess George, New York, 1988, p. 173, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1915 diary, private collection, 29-30 March and 2 April entries, p. 64

•DLA042-0049, telegram from Grand Duchess Marie Georgievna to de László, 27 March 1915  

KF 2018