6227

Jonkheer Hugo Loudon 1909

Seated half-length to the left, wearing a grey suit and tie with a pearl and diamond tie-pin, his left hand raised to his chin

Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm (36 ¾ x 28 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P A László / 1909 London

Sitters’ Book I, f. 72: H. Loudon / 14/11/09

Sitters’ Book I, f. 79: Hugo Loudon

Private Collection

Hugo Loudon and his wife Anna, whose portrait [6234] had been completed in February 1908, visited the painter’s studio in London in June 1908. De László was away in Greece, but his wife Lucy received the couple. Afterwards they wrote expressing their wish to commission several more family portraits, perhaps of Hugo himself or their three sons. This was probably the reason for de László’s visit to the Netherlands in March 1909. The portrait of Hugo Loudon was probably begun in March 1909 immediately after de László had painted Hugo’s mother, Louise Loudon de Stuers [6238]. The portrait was nevertheless signed, and thus probably completed, in London.

De László painted Anna again in 1920 [6237]. He also painted their son, John Hugo [6246] and his uncle, Hugo's brother, Ambassador John Loudon [6241], in 1920. He also painted the sitter’s eldest sister Adriana [110706] and her husband, Theodorus van Riemsdijk [10774] in 1909.

Jonkheer Hugo Loudon was born in The Hague on 18 June 1860. He was the eldest son of James Loudon (1824-1900) and Louise Wilhelmine François Félicité de Stuers (1835-1915). James Loudon had served as Governor General of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) from 1871 to 1875.  His career had been aided by his marriage to Louise, the daughter of the Commander of the Royal Dutch East Indian Army.

Hugo worked for the South African Railway Company as a civil engineer and later founded and became Director of the Royal Company of Exploration of Petroleum Wells in the Dutch Indies, and in 1890 was co-founder with Henri Deterding^[1] of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Petroleum Maatschappij (now Royal Dutch Shell plc.). In 1924 he became president of the Deli-Maatschappij. On 26 March 1903 he married Anna Petronella Alida van Marken (1874-1953) in the Hague, daughter of the Rev. Willem and Jonkvrouwe Henrietta Carolina Wilhelmina van Riemsdijk. Together they had three sons, James Willem, John Hugo and Hugo Alexander. He died in The Hague on 6 September 1941.  

LITERATURE:         

•Henriques, Robert David Quixano, Bearsted: A Biography of Marcus Samuel, First Viscount Bearsted, and Founder of Shell. . . , Viking Press, 1980, p. 645, ill.

•Grever, Tonko and Annemieke Heuft (Sandra de Laszlo, British ed.). De László in Holland: Dutch Masterpieces by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), Paul Holberton Publishing, London, 2006, pp. 8, 10, 50, 52, 54, 70, 75, ill. n° 19

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 114

•DLA074-0060, letter from Hugo Loudon to de László, 10 June  

CWS 2008