1769

UNTRACED

Gladys Cooper as Lady Agatha in The Admirable Crichton 1916

Half-length, full face, wearing a décolleté gown, holding a pale rose to her breast with both hands

Oil on board, [dimensions unknown]

Sitters’ Book II, f. 4: Gladys Cooper / April 20th 1916.

De László’s study portrait shows the actress Gladys Cooper in her role as Lady Agatha Lazenby in James Barrie’s play The Admirable Crichton. It was commissioned by the publisher Hodder and Stoughton for reproduction in the Star and Garter edition of the text. Two other actresses from the play were also painted for the publication: Lily Elsie by Sir James Jebusa Shannon [NPG 4322] and Lillah McCarthy by Sir John Lavery. The Royal Star and Garter Charity was established in 1916 to care for soldiers who had been severely disabled during the First World War. In 1916 de László also painted the actress Julia James [5821] for the benefit of St Dunstan’s charity for blind servicemen.

The sitter’s memoirs record that she sat for her portrait 18 April 1916.^[1] It was included in a charitable auction to benefit the war effort on 24 July 1916 at the Cecil Hotel in London, when her portrait by Shannon was also auctioned.^[2] The purchaser was Sir Charles Russell [6657] as Lucy de László records in her diary that Russell then sold it for £500 in aid of the British Red Cross and it was taken to India and auctioned again for the same charity for £1000.^[3] It may have been purchased either at auction or subsequently by Colonel H.H. Shri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji (1872-1933), known in England as the cricket-playing Prince “Ranji.”^[4]   

De László first met the sitter at a lunch hosted by Lady Sibyl Colefax [4111] in 1915.^[5] The artist’s archive contains a letter dated 18 November 1927 from Gladys Cooper to the Duke of Portland [4442] asking him to intercede with de László on her behalf to see if he might paint a study portrait of her in the style of that of the Duchess of Portland [4423] painted in 1927.^[6] That portrait [113369] is currently untraced.

Gladys Constance Cooper was born 18 December 1888 in Lewisham, the eldest of three daughters of Charles William Frederick Cooper (1844–1939), journalist and editor of Epicure, and his second wife, Mabel Barnett (1861–1944). By the age of seven she had begun regular photographic modelling for the studio of Downey’s in Ebury Street and in 1905 she was offered the title role in Sir E. Seymour Hicks’s play, Bluebell in Fairyland that opened in Chichester. A year later she joined George Edwardes’s company at the Gaiety Theatre, London. On 12 December 1908 at St George’s, Hanover Square, Gladys married Hubert John Buckmaster (1881-1966). There were two children of the marriage: Joan (born 1910) and John (born 1915).

Gladys Cooper’s first significant break as an actress came in 1912 when she was cast in Arnold Bennett’s Milestones at the Royalty. This led to increasingly important roles, and in 1916 she performed at the Playhouse Theatre near Charing Cross. She remained for fifteen years and became its manager, one of only two women to manage a theatre before the Second World War.

In her early days at the Playhouse, the sitter performed in various matinee charity performances, one of which was Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton.^[7] Her part as Lady Agatha was minor, but the performances at the Coliseum and London Opera House were high profile, being attended on one occasion by Queen Mary and other members of the royal family.^[8] 

Gladys Cooper divorced Hubert Buckmaster in 1921, but they remained close friends for the rest of her life. In 1928 she married Sir Neville Arthur Pearson, 2nd Bt., with whom she had a daughter, Sally (born 1937). This marriage also ended in divorce in 1937. By this time, changes in theatrical tastes meant an end to Gladys Cooper’s engagement at the Playhouse, and subsequently her achievements in the theatre became more sporadic. She did, however, enjoy some success in plays such as The Rats of Norway (1933) starring Laurence Olivier, and The Shining Hour (1934).

In 1937 Gladys Cooper married her third husband, the American actor Philip Merivale (1886-1946). In the autumn of 1939, Alfred Hitchcock offered her a part as Laurence Olivier’s sister in Rebecca (1940) and this prompted a move to Hollywood. She established a successful film career, which included the role of Mr Higgins’ mother in My Fair Lady (1964). She returned to the London stage occasionally in the 1950s and 1960s and was appointed a Dame of the British Empire in 1967. She died at her London home in Henley 17 November 1971.

PROVENANCE:

Commissioned by Hodder and Stoughton to illustrate J. M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton, The Star and Garter edition, London, 1916;

Sold Red Cross Auction, 24 July 1916;

Sir Charles Russell;

Sold British Red Cross Auction, London 1917;

Sold British Red Cross Auction, India, 1918

LITERATURE:

•J. M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton (The Star and Garter edition), Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1916, ill. opp. p. 208;

•Cooper, Gladys, Gladys Cooper, Hutchinson and Co. Ltd, London, 1931, p. 134

•Supplement to “The Bookman”, Christmas 1920, ill.

•Wild, Roland, The Biography of Colonel His Highness Shri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, Maharaja Jam Saheb of Nawanagor, 1934, p. 220

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 305-306

•Morrow, Ann, Highness: The Maharajahs of India, 1986, p. 211

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 150

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 73

•DLA123-0106, letter from Gladys Cooper to the Duke of Portland, 18 November [1927]

•László, Lucy de, 1918 diary, private collection, 7 May entry, pp. 130-131

KF 2021