6928

Field-Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts of Kandahar 1911

Seated three-quarter length to the left, full face, wearing evening dress, the blue sash and Order of the Garter, his left hand gripping the arm of the mahogany chair and his right holding his white gloves, against a dark background

Oil on canvas, 113 x 81 cm (46 x 32 in.)

Inscribed top left: P. A. de László / 1911 VI   

Sitters' Book I, opp. f. 86: Roberts. / FM 8. Feb. 1911 

W.P.H. Jeffcock Collection, Virginia, U.S.A

In October of the same year de László painted a full-length portrait of the sitter in service dress, commissioned for the Eton College South African Memorial Buildings, and now hangs in School Hall, Eton College [6924]. A small oil sketch for that portrait remains in the possession of a descendant of the artist [6925]. Also in October 1911, the artist painted a fourth portrait of Roberts, half-length in blue dress uniform, commissioned by 1st Viscount Devonport [6931] while an authorized copy of it by Frederick Cullen hangs in the Naval and Military Club, St James’s Square, London [6929].

Lord Roberts first signed the artist’s Sitters’ Book on 8 February 1911; Lucy de László noted in her diary on 3 April that he had attended his first sitting at ten that morning.^[1] The Coronation of King George V took place in June of the same year and, as the present portrait is dated the same month, it may have been completed in association with that occasion. Lord Roberts was given the honour of carrying the Pointed Sword of Justice to the Spirituality during the Coronation service.^[2] The work was intended to be hung in an exhibition at Agnew’s in May that year and there seems to have been some pressure on de László to complete it. Lucy again mentioned the picture in her diary entry 7 May, “P. is spending whole day in studio as his ex: is so near. – It will open at Agnew’s on the 17th. Pics: that are almost finished he is hurrying to complete – Ld Roberts.”^[3]

De László’s strength in male portraiture is much in evidence in the present portrait. The General, in his seventy-ninth year, still exudes the control and command for which he was known throughout many years of hard campaigning.  

The present portrait was inherited by the sitter’s grandson Freddy Lewin, with the de László portrait of his father, Brigadier-General Lewin [6053].

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [6924].

PROVENANCE: 

By descent in the family;

Bequeathed to Mr. Michael Borwick, Blair House, Ayrshire;

The Blair Sale; Lyon and Turnbull, Edinburgh, 14 March 2012, lot 86

EXHIBITED:

•Agnew’s, London, Exhibition of Portraits by Philip de László, M.V.O., May-June 1911

LITERATURE:        

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 164, 174

•Illustrated London News, 24 June 1911, ill.

•Illustrated London News (New York Edition), 8 July, 1911, p. 59, ill.

• Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 271-2, 273, 296 & 367

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 180, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1911 diary, private collection

•DLA162-0511, Pesti Hírlap, 31 May 1911, p. 9

KF 2012