5917

The Honourable Frank Billings Kellogg, American Ambassador to the Court of St James's 1925

Seated half-length to the right, his right hand on the arm of his chair, his left holding his mortarboard and-wearing a red doctor’s gown over a dark suit

Oil on canvas, 95.3 x 74.9 cm (37 ¾ x 30 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1925. II.

Laib L11755(111) / C14(11a) Mr. Kellogg

NPG Album 1925, p. 50

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 44: Frank B. Kellogg Feby. 3rd 1925

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

There exists a preparatory sketch for this picture, which remained in the possession of the artist on his death [5915]. A copy of the present portrait, painted in 1929 by Edward Patry, is now in the collection of the United States Embassy in London.^[1] The present picture is the first of four formal portraits that de László painted of the sitter. In 1929 the artist painted Mr Kellogg seated at a table with a large globe behind him [5920], which remains untraced, as well as a half-length portrait of the Mrs Kellogg [5924]. In 1931 the sitter was painted twice. The first is in the collection of the US Department of State [5923], while the second was painted for the International Court of Justice at the Peace Palace at The Hague and remains untraced [31].

De László had previously painted two American Ambassadors to the Court of St James’s, Walter Hines Page in 1917 [6498] and John W. Davis in 1920 [4636] and he viewed the commission to paint the present sitter as the third in a series. He added a fourth in 1928, completing a portrait of Ambassador Alanson B. Houghton [5800].

The present portrait was commissioned at the end of Kellogg’s tenure as Ambassador at the Court of St James’s. The sitter is depicted in the red academic robes of his honorary degree, received from McGill University, Montreal, in 1913.^[2] Shortly after the portrait’s completion, Kellogg returned to America to take up the position of Secretary of State. The portrait hung in the United States Embassy in London from 1925 to 1929, when it was replaced by Edward Patry’s copy. The present portrait then returned to the US with the sitter, as a pendant to the portrait of his wife.

The artist included Kellogg in an article about his most famous sitters in 1932. “Among the outstanding personalities I have had the privilege to paint was Mr. F. B. Kellogg, the author of the Kellogg Pact for the prevention of war, a great statesman and peacemaker, and now American Representative on the International Peace Tribunal at The Hague. For Mr. Kellogg I have a great personal esteem, which commenced when he first sat for me, and since then a real friendship has sprung up between us. He talked of world peace, not as a dreamer but as one who firmly believes that this wonderful blessing can be assured to the world. Peace is his greatest desire, and to that end he will work as long as he lives.”^[3]

Frank Billings Kellogg was born in Potsdam, New York, on 22 December 1856. Educated at public schools in Minnesota, he was admitted to the bar in 1877 and practiced law in Rochester, Minnesota, where he became city attorney and later county attorney.  On 16 June 1886 he married Clara May Cook of Rochester. He was a special counsel for the US Government in the prosecution of anti-trust suits, and became president of the American Bar Association between 1912-3. After serving as the US Senator from Minnesota (1917-23), he was appointed in 1923 as Ambassador to the Court of St James’s. He held the post until 1925, when he was appointed Secretary of State by President Coolidge [4169]; while holding that office he was the author of the Kellogg-Briand pact, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929. He resumed the practice of law in Minnesota and became a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice.

On 21 December 1937 Frank Billings Kellogg died from pneumonia, following a stroke, in St Paul, Minnesota, and is buried with his wife in the nearby town of Faribault.

PROVENANCE:

Hung in the United States Embassy, London, 1925 to 1929;

The sitter;

Bequeathed by Mr and Mrs Frank B. Kellogg to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1944;

De-accessioned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1979;

Sold at Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, lot 80, 3 May 1979 (with [5924] included in the same lot);

Sold at Christie’s East, New York, lot 438, 2 March 1990 (with [5924]);

Private Collection;

On loan to the United States Ambassadorial Residence, Winfield House, London, 1991-1994;

Donated to the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., by Dr. Edward T. Wilson, 2006

EXHIBITED:

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 19-31 October 1925, no. 16

•The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Special Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 5-27 December 1925, no. 6

•The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Special Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 31 December 1925-10 January 1926, no. 6

•Murakami Gallery, New York, Hungarian Masters: A Reassessment The Last 120 Years, 27-28 June 1995, no. 5

LITERATURE:

•The Times, 17 February 1925, p. 18, ill.

•The Graphic, 21 February 1925, p. 267, ill.

•Town & Country, Vol. 81, No. 3939, 1 July 1926, ill. p. 22

•“New Laszlo Portraits: Prominent Americans as the Painter Sees Them,” The Graphic, 3 July 1926, p. 15, ill.

•The New York Times, 30 September 1928, ill.

•Suydam, Henry, “From the White House Steps,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, New York, 15 September 1929

•Bryn-Jones, David, Frank B. Kellogg: A Biography, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1937, p. ii, ill.

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 359

•DLA 1932 parcel, Town and Country, 1932, ill.

MD 2012