5184

The Honourable Andrew Charles Victor Elphinstone  1925

Standing full-length to the right, wearing an open-necked cream shirt, and a Royal Stuart tartan kilt, his right arm holding a bow, an arrow in his left, a cloudy landscape and loch beyond

Oil on canvas, 124.5 x 86.4 cm (49 x 34 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / July 1925   

Laib L11768 (111) / C1 (20): Master Alphinstone [sic]

NPG Album 1921-1925, p. 18

Sitter’s Book II, opp. f. 45: Andrew Elphinstone [in the artist's hand: 2 July 1925]

Private Collection

De László painted the sitter’s parents in 1929. His mother, Lady Mary Bowes Lyon [5182] was an elder sister of Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother [4460]. The formal portrait of the sitter’s father hangs in The Head Office of The Bank of Scotland, on The Mound, in Edinburgh [5133].

There exists a copy of the present portrait, and a preparatory oil sketch which the artist retained in his studio also remains [5187].

The Honourable Andrew Charles Victor Elphinstone was born on 11 November 1918, the younger son of Sidney Herbert, 16th Baron Elphinstone (1869-1955) and his wife, Lady Mary Bowes Lyon (1883-1961). He was educated at St. Peter’s Court, Broadstairs, Eton, New College Oxford and Wycliffe Hall Theological College, from 1948 until 1950. He served with The Cameron Highlanders in the Second World War and as Aide de Camp to the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, from 1941 to 1943. He was then posted to MI5 for the remainder of the war. He loved shooting and the countryside, and was a keen gardener. A proud Scot, he was happiest in Scotland. On 29 May 1946 he married Jean Frances Hambro, daughter of Angus Hambro, M.P. for Milton Abbey in Dorset and his wife Vanda Charlton. There were two children of the marriage:  Rosemary (born 1947) and James (born 1953).

Andrew Elphinstone was an accomplished pianist and organist, and a good linguist: he learnt Gaelic and, when in India, Urdu. In 1950 he was ordained into the Church of England, working in Wimborne Minster and later as Rector in Worplesdon, Surrey. A much-loved parish priest, he retired in 1964 due to ill health. He died on 19 March 1975 at Maryland, Worplesdon. His book, Freedom, Suffering and Love, was published posthumously.

EXHIBITED:

•French Gallery, London, June 1927, A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., no. 10          

•Victoria Art Galleries, Dundee, Exhibition of recent Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., September 1932, no. 13

•Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., London, Exhibition of Paintings by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., In Aid of the London Hospital and The Artists’ General Benevolent Institution, November-December 1937, no. 13  

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 101

LITERATURE:          

•“A Painter of Royalty: The Art of Philip Laszlo,” The Graphic, 18 June 1927, p. 499, ill.

•“Great Painter’s Little Scot,” The Bulletin, 18 June 1927, ill.

•Mee, Arthur, ed., My Magazine, Vol. 24, No. 222 (August 1928), p. 616, ill.

•Blanco y Negro, 37th year, no. 1876, Madrid, Sunday 1 May 1927, p. 29, ill.

•Illustrirte Zeitung, Dec. 16, 1937

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton Publishing, London 2004, p. 166, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 192

•DLA123-0043, letter from Lord Elphinstone to de László, 26 May 1925

CWS 2008