7368

Study portrait

Prince Paul Troubetzkoy 1931

Half-length slightly to the right, head turned in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a dark suit and white shirt with a blue tie, his left hand raised to his chest and holding a lighted cigarette

Oil on board, 96.5 x 74 cm (40 x 29 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László 

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 69: Paul Troubetzkoy / 8 Juin 1931

De László met the aristocratic sculptor Prince Paul Troubetzkoy in Paris in 1931 and they exchanged portraits of each other. Although they worked in different media both artists adopted an immediacy and fluidity in their technique. Troubetzkoy’s bronze statuette of de László shows the artist seated, an especially difficult composition in sculpture and one that he specialised in. The present picture and the sculpture were shown together at the Colnaghi Gallery in London in 1931, the year they were made. The artist recorded in his diary that he thought his portrait was one of his best.^[1] De László made this statement regularly during his career; it is not borne out by the picture in its present condition.

Prince Paul Troubetzkoy was born 15 February at Intra, near Lake Maggiore, Italy, 1866, the son of Peter Petrovich Troubetzkoy (1822-1882), a Russian Diplomat, and his American-born wife Ada Winans (1831-1917), an opera singer. He married firstly Elin Sundström (1883–1927) of Sweden and secondly to English-born Muriel Marie Boddam (1899-1948) in 1931.  

Troubetzkoy moved to Russia in 1898, where he taught sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Moscow. He was a friend of Leo Tolstoy and made made several portrait busts and small equestrian statues of the author. His equestrian monument of Tsar Alexander III (1899-1909) for Znamenskaya Square, St Petersburg was moved to a street at the rear of the State Russian Museum after the revolution in 1917. Today it stands in front of the Marble Palace in the city.

In 1900 he won the Grand Prix de Sculpture at the Universal Exhibition in Paris and in 1906 opened a studio near the Bois de Boulogne. He portrayed many of those in his circle including the novelist Anatole France, the actress Cécile Sorel, Baron and Baroness de Rothschild, Georges Clémenceau, and his friends Rodin, Helleu and Boldini. Troubetzkoy was in America for the opening of an exhibition at the outbreak of the First World War and remained there until 1921, travelling widely throughout the country.

Though most renowned for his bronze portrait statuettes, Troubetzkoy was also an accomplished painter and draughtsman. He was a vegetarian and an early animal rights activist. He exhibited five sculptures at the Salon des Artistes Animaliers in Paris in 1913.

He died at Pallanza, on Lake Maggiore, in 1938.

EXHIBITED:

•Colnaghi’s, New Bond Street, London, December 1931

LITERATURE:

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 112

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 5

•László, Philip de, 1931 diary, 3 June entry, p. 158, 7 June entry, p. 162

MD & KF 2018