5554

Professor John Scott Haldane 1933

Seated three-quarter length to the left, wearing a dark three-piece suit with a wing collar, dark tie and gold watch chain, holding a small book in both hands in his lap, the index fingers of both hands between the pages

Oil on canvas, 115 x 87.7 cm (45 ¼ x 34 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1933

Laib L17808(510) / C11(23): Lord Haldane

NPG Album 1933, p. 27

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 76: J. S. Haldane Sept. 11, 1933

University of Oxford, Bodleian Library

De László first conceived this portrait as a half-length [112620] showing the sitter almost full face to the viewer,  which he put aside in favour of a larger canvas for the present portrait. A preparatory drawing [112904] was recorded in the Studio Inventory made after the artist’s death, but was not photographed and is untraced. De László also painted the sitter’s elder brother, Richard Burdon Haldane, Viscount Haldane, in 1928 [5552].

The final sitting for the present portrait took place 21 November 1933 and it was unveiled by the Dean of St Paul’s at a dinner on 25 November: “The Dean unveiled the portrait of professor Haldane I just finished & made a little speech I think in genuine appreciation – It was a sympathetic little evening & dear miss Haldane is happy – so is her brother with the pic – when will I be happy with my work!”^[1] It is not clear what caused de László’s dissatisfaction with the portrait but it is reminiscent of the formal style of commissioned portraits painted earlier in his career and atypical of the free and energetic brushwork in his portraits of the 1930s.

Catherine Inge, a mutual friend of artist and sitter, wrote to tell de László of the impression the portrait had made on her: “It was such a very great pleasure to see you again, and I feel I want to tell you how enormously impressed I am with your most remarkable portrait of Professor John. I know him so intimately, and you have got all his wonderful character in his face. Your portrait lives: it is so intensely alive. I don’t think I have ever been more impressed by any modern portrait that I have ever seen. How impertinent this is of me to write to a great Master like yourself, but I love Professor John Haldane & your perfect interpretation of his noble character is supreme.”^[2]

John Scott Haldane was born 3 May 1860, in Edinburgh, the third surviving son of Robert Haldane, Writer to the Signet, of Cloanden (later Cloan), Perthshire and his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Burdon-Sanderson. He attended the Edinburgh Academy at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Jena before graduating in 1884 from the Edinburgh University Medical School.

His career was long and distinguished and he was a leader in the study of human respiration. His practical applications saved many lives, particularly his research into carbon monoxide poisoning in mines and, in the late 1890s, the introduction of mice or canaries as early warning systems. They were not replaced by electric detectors until 1986. As part of his research he tested the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning on himself and designed a respirator for use by rescue workers.

During the First World War Haldane was asked to go to the front by Lord Kitchener to investigate the poison gases being used by the German forces. This led to his inventing the Black Veil respirator. He was also an authority on pulmonary diseases and produced the first decompression chambers to improve the safety of deep-sea divers.

Haldane was President of the English Institution of Mining Engineers 1924-1928, a Companion of Honour of the British Court, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Royal Society of Medicine. He founded the Journal of Hygiene and his books include: Respiration (1922), The Sciences and Philosophy (1929), The Philosophical Basis of Biology (1931), and The Philosophy of a Biologist (1935).  

On 12 December 1891 Haldane married Louisa Kathleen Trotter (1863–1961), only child of the Scottish author Coutts Trotter (1831-1906) and his wife Harriet Augusta Keatinge (1824-1912). There were two children of the marriage: John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (born 1892), noted geneticist and physiologist, and Naomi (born 1897), a novelist who was widely published under her married name Mitchison.

Haldane died at midnight 14-15 March 1936 in Oxford, having just returned from Persia to investigate the cause of heat stroke in employees of oil refineries.

EXHIBITED:

•Wildenstein, London, Exhibition of Paintings by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 24 November-22 December 1937, no. 24 (2nd hang on 7 December 1937)

LITERATURE:

•Scottish National Portrait Gallery Catalogue of Subjects, p. 134, ill. p. 137

•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, Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., ill.

•László, Philip de, 1933 diary, private collection, 21 November entry, p. 21

•DLA020-0245, letter from Mrs William Ralph Inge to de László, 28 November 1933

KF 2021