6430

Ailsa Mellon 1926

Seated three-quarter length slightly to the right on a carved bergère upholstered in white, mauve and blue-green material, wearing a white evening dress with gold trim, a mauve chiffon wrap and a long string of pearls entwined around her left arm and hand, against a dark background

Oil on canvas, 122.3 x 96.6 cm (48 ⅛ x 38 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1926. III   

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 48: Ailsa Mellon March 3rd ‘ ‘ [among signatures dated 1926]

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

This portrait was commissioned in 1925 by Ailsa Mellon’s father, Andrew Mellon.^[1] It was not completed until early in 1926, when de László also painted the sitter’s father [6418]. On 2 February she gave the artist an initial sitting in New York,^[2] and the portrait was completed thereafter in Washington, D.C., “in the Larz Anderson [2589] residence in an improvised studio on the upper floor which has an excellent north light.”^[3] As well as a preparatory pencil sketch for this picture [5729], there also exists a portrait drawing of the sitter, head only, which remains untraced [6431].

In an interview with the Boston Herald, de László confessed that he had trouble painting the sitter’s dress: “When I don’t like what I have painted I take my knife and scratch it out. When I painted Miss Mellon I erased her dress three times.”^[4] One critic thought the portrait ‘a picture of youth painted with freshness and in the style of the day—light in coloring, high in key, not a profound but a pleasing presentation. Even apparently to this great portrait painter youth is baffling and the best he can do is to record its sheer loveliness. For once maturity scores.”^[5]

Even though Ailsa Mellon married David Bruce only a few months after the completion of this portrait, it was not intended as an engagement or a wedding gift, and Andrew Mellon hung it in his own home. When the artist had the opportunity to see it in situ again in 1931, he noted: “I saw my portrait of Elsie [sic] […] – I like it - & he will let me have it for my Exh: in N.Y. – with Knoedlers.”^[6]

Ailsa Mellon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 28 June 1901, the daughter of Andrew Mellon (1855-1937) and his wife Nora McMullen (1879-1973). On 29 May 1926, she married David Kirkpatrick Este Bruce (1898-1977), who became a distinguished diplomat and also served as President of the National Gallery of Art from 1939 to 1945. They had one child, Audrey (born 1934).^[7] They divorced in 1945.

As a young woman, and even after her marriage, the sitter acted as her father’s official hostess, both in Washington while he was Secretary of the Treasury (1921-32) and later when he was Ambassador to Great Britain (1932-3). She was presented at the Court of St. James’s in May 1932.^[8]

Ailsa established the Avalon Foundation in 1940, which, among other things, funded the National Gallery’s Andrew W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. In 1946 she designated funds for the Gallery’s purchase of American art and later made possible the acquisition of many Old Master paintings, such as Ginevra de’Benci, the only painting by Leonardo de Vinci outside Europe. Along with her brother Paul, she contributed a substantial sum to finance the new East Building, but she did not live to see even the foundations laid. Her bequest to the National Gallery included an endowment fund and her own fine collection of small paintings by the French impressionists. She also had a passion for jewellery, and patronized many goldsmiths. She died on 25 August 1969, aged sixty-eight.

The sitter was also painted by Savely Sorine, in 1930.^[9]

PROVENANCE:

Andrew Mellon, the sitter’s father;^[10]

The sitter;

Bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art by the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Estate, 1970

EXHIBITED:

•Knoedler Galleries, New York, An Exhibition of Portraits by P. A. de Laszlo, M.V.O. for the Benefit of the Emergency Unemployment Relief Fund, January 1932, no. 1

•National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Memorial Exhibition to Mrs. Bruce, 30 August-12 October, 1969

LITERATURE:

•Town and Country, 1 June 1926, p. 49, ill.

•László, Philip de, 1931 diary, private collection, 23 December entry, p. 361

•“Every Court But China,” Time Magazine, Vol. XIX, No. 4 (25 January 1932), pp. 26-28

•The New York Times, 1 September 1969

•Washington National Gallery of Art Catalogue 1975, p. 188, ill.

•Christie’s New York, Jewels from the Collection of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, 7 December 1988, p. 9, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 197

•DLA119-0156, Star, Washington, DC, 21 March 1926

Original frame by Grieve Company, New York and London

MD 2011