4413

Portrait drawing 

Winifred Anna Cavendish-Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, née Winifred Dallas-Yorke 1911

Head and shoulders, looking in three-quarter profile to the left, a laurel wreath in her hair

Charcoal on paper, 72.1 x 52.4 cm (28 ⅜ x 20 ⅝ in.)

Inscribed lower right:         P.A. László / 1911. Welbeck.

Laib L50129(982) / C22(12)  Duchess of Portland

Private Collection

The Duke of Portland was de László's greatest patron and friend in England. The artist painted nearly thirty portraits of the family over the years 1911 to 1937, the present portrait being one of the first. He was often a guest at their home, Welbeck Abbey, Worksop, where the Duke hung his portraits together in the ‘László Room.’ In 1912 he painted two oil portraits of the Duchess in the same laurel wreath, which is thought to have been owned by the artist as other distinguished sitters were painted in it over the years. There exists a contemporary lithograph of this drawing, much smaller than the original, one copy of which remains in a private collection. The Duchess’s beauty was captured by de László no less than six times, the most famous of which, the Queen Mary’s pearls portrait [4411], has only recently been re-discovered.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4411].

EXHIBITED:        

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 49

LITERATURE:          

•The Sketch, 29 May 1912, ill.

•The Sketch, 20 November 1912, ill.

•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien, n° 106, Ph A. von László, Bielefeld and Leipzig (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, ill. p. 124, pl. 140

•The Graphic, 15 November 1913, ill.

•The Studio Magazine, 1913, vol. LIX, article pp. 299-306, ill. p. 301

•Goulding, Richard W. The Catalogue of Pictures. The Duke of Portland, Prepared by C. K. Adams, Cambridge University Press, 1936 (Private printing of 150 copies), nº 925

•[F.L.L.],“Art in the Making,” The Graphic, 24 January 1925, p. 122, ill.

•Portland, William Cavendish-Bentinck (6th Duke), Men, Women and Things, Memories of the Duke of Portland, K.G., G.C.V.O., London, 1937, p. 221

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 114, ill.

CWS 2008