11664

Henry Guinness de Laszlo 1915

Standing three-quarter length to the left, wearing a green apron over a dark jacket and tie, a long bench table running along the side of the window to his right and behind him, on which stands a bottle and two glass phials and various books, Henry looking at the test tube and other apparatus he holds in his hands

Oil on board, 50.8 x 40.7 cm (20 x 16 in.)

Inscribed lower right: P A de László / 1915 VIII 

Laib L7926 (238) / C18 (21A)  

NPG Album, 1915-16, p. 16a [labelled by the artist]: Our Henry / 1914 at Hammondswood

Private Collection

Hammondswood was a cottage in the village of Frensham in Surrey, which Philip and Lucy de László in the summer before the artist’s internment. The painting of this picture was later described by a member of the family: “At the time the picture was painted Henry was attending Rugby School where he excelled in sciences, particularly chemistry. Father and son decided that Henry should be painted doing what he loved most (at least at school) so Henry borrowed a considerable amount of chemistry equipment and set some up on a large table - beakers, glasses, Bunsen burner, etc. with the idea that he would be painted in the middle or towards the end of a complex and successful experiment. De László, when he saw the set-up, had Henry dismantle the experiment, empty the beakers, remove most of the pieces and substitute coloured water.” Henry was not amused, however the composition is nonetheless very effective.

Henry, the eldest of the five sons of Philip and Lucy de László, was born in Budapest on 11 June 1901. After the family’s move to England, he was educated at Twyford Preparatory School from 1910 until 1914, at Rugby School from 1914 until 1918, and finally at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he gained an M.A. in Physics in 1922. During 1925 he studied in Paris and then at Zurich University, where he achieved a PhD in Chemistry, in 1926. During his time at Cambridge he worked at Rutherford’s Laboratories.^[1] Henry moved to America where he became Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), from 1927-9, building and establishing their spectroscopy laboratory. Then between 1931 and 1934 he was a Research Fellow at University College, London.  In 1934 he founded L. Light & Co., producing and providing rare organic chemicals to research laboratories worldwide. In 1947 he went on to found Colour Centre Laboratories specialising in photographing museum collections in 35mm for resale and four years later founded the Fertility Research Centre, set up to research ethno-botanical means and methods of contraception. From 1950 onwards he accumulated an extensive library on Medicinal Botany, now at Cambridge – ‘The Henry de Laszlo Library of Medical Botany.’ In 1965 he patented the use of graphite for artificial heart valves; two years later he patented the use of ‘Prunus Africanum’ to alleviate Prostatic Adenoma. He published numerous papers on organic and inorganic chemistry, electron microscopy and medicinal botany.

He collected Chinese ceramics and bronzes of the early dynasties, the greater part of which are now housed at the University of Durham, with the Gulbenkian Collection.

He married twice; firstly Violet Staub in 1927, with whom he had a son, Michael (born 1935). Two years after his divorce, in 1953, he married Juliane (Isa) Fischer. They had a son, Stephen (born 1957) and a daughter, Pauline (born 1962). Henry died following injuries received in an automobile accident on 30 October 1967.

PROVENANCE:        

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:        

•Grosvenor Gallery, London, Fifth Annual National Portrait Society, February-March 1916, no. 52

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 74

LITERATURE:        

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 298        

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2004, p. 142, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 167

•László, Lucy de, 1915 diary, private collection, 3 September entry, p. 109

SdeL 2004