12015

The Infante Don Juan de Borbón y Battenberg 1927

Standing three-quarter length to the left, in the dress uniform and cape of the Spanish Royal Engineers, his left hand on his white leather belt; he wears the Town Councils’ Medal of Homage to the King and Queen.

Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 63.5 cm (35 ½ x 25 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1927 Madrid

Inscribed top right: S. A. EL INFANTE D. JUAN 

Sitters’ Book, II, f. 53: Juan / 31-III-1927.

Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid

This portrait was one of eight de László painted of the King and Queen of Spain’s children in 1927. It is very close in composition to the portrait of the Infante don Gonzalo, his younger brother [8014], and it may be that they were intended as a pair. The dimensions and frames of both portraits are identical.

In a review of the French Gallery exhibition of forty of de László’s paintings in London, 1927, the Hungarian art critic Vilmos de Ruttkay, wrote of both portraits, in Pesti Hirlap: “László is a par excellence children painter – a difficult art indeed. It may be that as the father of five bonny boys – who were always at hand as models – he acquired a particular skill. The candid manner in which the refined, highly bred features, the rosy cheeks and luminous eyes of these young princes are painted, gives one the impression that the artist’s mind reverted to the happy days of his own boys’ nursery. His colours shimmer, the firmness of his touch becomes more tender and his brushwork more gentle and sensitive. These child portraits, including those of Hugh Astor [2606], of little Andrew Elphinstone [5184], and of his own boy, Johnny – as a boy scout [8454] – are perhaps the most sensitive works at the exhibition.”^[1]

The Infante don Juan de Borbón y Battenberg was born at La Granja de San Ildefonso, near Segovia on 20 January 1913. He was the third son of Alfonso XIII of Spain [7925] and his wife, Princess Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, now Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain [7933] and was a strong and healthy child.

When Alfonso XIII was forced into exile by the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931, don Juan had already started his training at the Naval School at San Fernando in Cádiz. In exile, having been dispatched to France via Naples, don Juan needed to reconsider his plans for the future. His father, with the help of George VI [9123], secured him a place at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. He became an officer of the Royal Navy in 1934. After passing his exams in gunnery and navigation in 1935, he became, as a non-British citizen, an Honorary Lieutenant of the British Navy.

After the renunciations to succession of his elder brothers, don Alfonso [8004] and don Jaime [10852] in 1933, don Juan became next in line to the Spanish throne, assuming the heir apparent’s title of Prince of Asturias. He was serving in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Enterprise in Bombay when he received a telegram from his father, informing him that he was now heir to the Spanish throne. He became a definite hope for the Spanish royalists, but it was not until 1941, two months before he died, that Alfonso XIII, in exile in Rome, finally abdicated.  In order not to create problems, don Juan decided to use the Royal title of Count of Barcelona, instead of King of Spain.

In 1935, he met his future wife, Princess María de las Mercedes de Borbón y Orléans, who was descended from the royal families of France, Spain, Italy and Austria. Their marriage was attended by thousands of Spanish royalists in Rome, who considered them Prince and Princess of Asturias, the future King and Queen of Spain.

Don Juan was living in Cannes, when he heard the news of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936.  He gained his father’s permission, (unlike his elder brother, don Jaime) to return to Spain and participate in the Nationalist uprising against the Republicans. He succeeded in crossing the French border, the day after the birth of his first child, the Infanta María del Pilar, and, under the name “Juan López”, reached Pamplona. There the anti-monarchist General Mola ordered him to be stopped and returned to France. Both he and his elder brother don Jaime were obliged to follow the progress of their country’s war by listening to radio bulletins in the Hotel Eden, Rome. He appealed also to General Franco to allow him to serve in the Spanish Navy but Franco declined his request on account of “personal safety and importance in the dynastic succession.”

Don Juan and doña María de las Mercedes had four children: the aforementioned Infanta María del Pilar (born 1936), Juan Carlos (born 1938), who became King of Spain in 1969 as Juan Carlos I, the Infanta Margarita (born 1939) and the Infante Alfonso (born 1941). They lived first at the Villa Saint Blaise in Cannes and then in Rome. During the Second World War, they moved to Lausanne to live near Queen Victoria Eugenia and the Infantes Jaime, Beatriz and María Cristina [10854] and their families. Later, they resided at Estoril in Portugal.

When General Francisco Franco declared Spain a monarchy in 1947, he characterized it as a re-institution of the monarchy. However, Franco was afraid that don Juan would turn out to be too liberal and roll back the régime he himself had created. As a result, in 1969 Franco passed over don Juan, who would have been king if the monarchy had continued without interruption, in favour of his son, Juan Carlos. Don Juan formally renounced his claim to the throne in 1977. In return, his son officially confirmed his father’s title as Count of Barcelona.

He died on 1 April 1993, after seven months in the Clínica de Navarra in Pamplona, aged seventy-nine. He was buried as Juan III of Spain, with the honours due to a King, in the Pantheon of Kings and Queens at El Escorial, near Madrid.

PROVENANCE:

Property of Alfonso XIII, inv. no. 1307, hanging in the King's office in the Royal Palace

EXHIBITED:

•Museo de Arte Moderno, Madrid, 12-16 May 1927^[2]

•The French Gallery, London,  A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1927, no. 5

•Palacio Real, Madrid, El Retrato en Las Colecciones Reales de Patrimonio Nacional de Juan de Flandes a Antonio López, December 2014-April 2015, no. 108

LITERATURE:

•Ruttkay, Vilmos (de), review of the de László exhibition at the French Gallery in London, June 1927, in Pesti Hirlap, 24 June 1927

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 369

•Alcón, María Teresa Ruiz. “Habitaciones y Objetos Personales del Rey Don Alfonso XIII”, in Reales Sitios, no. 63, 1980, p. 28

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 207

•García-Frías Checa, Carmen, ed., El Retrato en Las Colecciones Reales de Patrimonio Nacional de Juan de Flandes a Antonio López, 2015, pp. 470-472, ill. p. 471

With our grateful thanks to Ilmo. Sr. Don Javier González de Vega y San Román for his assistance in preparing the biography for this entry.

SMdeL 2014