11592

Olga of Greece, Queen Mother of the Hellenes, née Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia 1914 

Seated three-quarter length in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing full black mourning dress with headdress and veil and the blue sash and badge of the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Saviour of Greece, a miniature of King George I of Greece at her breast, the Greek Royal and Russian Imperial Arms painted upper right

Oil on canvas, 147.3 x 102.9 cm (58 x 40 ½ in.)

Inscribed upper left: P. A. de László / ATHEN. / 1914. iv.  

Sitters’ Book I, f. 96: Die Kunst ist meine feurige Liebe / die zur Heimat führet / Athen März 1914.  Olga / Königin Mutter der Hellenen, Prinzessin von Dänemark, Grossfürstin von Russland^[1] 

Sitters’ Book I, f. 98: Olga 

Private Collection

De László was warmly received by the Dowager Queen Olga at the Royal Palace on his arrival to Athens in late March 1914. He had been invited by Prince Andrew of Greece [6622] on behalf of his brother King Constantine [11591] to paint portraits of the Greek Royal Family. Queen Olga personally gave the artist a tour of the Royal Palace, and provided him with a large room with north light for use as a studio. He also painted a study portrait of her in white mourning dress during the same visit [7794]. 

The first sitting took place the same day and Queen Olga chose to be painted in mourning for her husband of forty-six years, King George I of Greece, who had been assassinated the previous year. He remarked that he had some difficulty with the expression of her eyes as she could not see without her glasses.^[2] 

De László was very impressed by his sitter and recorded his thoughts about her in his memoirs: “Her nobility of mind and her goodness of heart were coupled with great modesty. I should like to give one illustration of her thoughtfulness. While I was painting the portrait, holding my heavy palette and brushes, which increased in number as the work went on, I only began to realize the weight of it when my arm began to shake with tiredness. Suddenly the Queen, seeing that my arm was trembling, asked me quietly but with much concern whether I did not feel my palette and all the brushes too heavy, and if my thumb, which had to take the strain of the weight, did not pain me. I could give no other reply to the unexpectedly kind enquiry but that I did not feel it while I was absorbed in my work. A few days later I entered the studio and found there a new palette, smaller in size, with the hole for the thumb padded round the edge with chamois leather. On the back there was written an inscription in ink, signed by the Queen. It would be difficult to give a better example of her tenderness of heart. She radiated love. All the Royal family were devoted to her, and while her portrait was being painted my studio became their meeting-place.”^[3] 

Queen Olga requested that de László accompany her as they were both travelling to England. He brought a number of  the portraits with him to complete, and in June she visited him in his studio at Fitzjohn’s Avenue accompanied by Queen Alexandra [7707] and her daughter Princess Victoria [10303] as well as the Empress Marie of Russia. Their signatures appear together in the artist’s Sitters’ Book on the same page as the King and Queen of Portugal [5160] & [4455], who visited a few days later. Lucy de László recorded the visit in her diary: “Today 3 crowned Heads came to the Studio to look at the Greek pictures. She (Greece) was so nice – large & gracious  looking – she sat a good deal & spoke with me – referring to the Austrian Tragedy she said to me “how happy for her, that they died together” She greatly liked my picture with John [13520] looked again & again at it, & asked for a photo of it when finished.”^[4]

Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia was born on 3 September 1851, daughter of Grand Duke Constantine and his wife Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg. She was the niece of Tsar Alexander II and granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I. In 1867 she married King George I of the Hellenes (1845-1913). He had been born Prince William of Denmark and was elected King of Greece in 1863. There were eight children of the marriage, their eldest son succeeding to the Greek throne as King Constantine I: Constantine (born 1868), George (born 1869) [7811], Alexandra (born 1870), Nicholas (born 1872) [7827], Marie (born 1876), Olga (born 1880), Andrew (born 1882), Christopher (born 1888).

Queen Olga was renowned for her philanthropic work and is remembered for her initiative to have the Bible was translated into Modern Greek. This was done without approval of the Greek Holy Synod, however, and led to calls for her excommunication; the resulting volume was banned. She spent the First World War and Revolution in Russia with her sister-in-law, the Dowager Empress Marie, where she established and ran a hospital in Pavlovsk, near St Petersburg. In early 1919 she was rescued by the Danish government’s granting her a passport and she joined her son Constantine in exile in Switzerland. She returned to Greece after the death of her grandson, King Alexander I in 1920, and became Regent until Constantine’s restoration in December of that year. After the declaration of a Republic in 1924, she lived in exile at first in London and then in Rome where she died in June 1926.  She was buried in the crypt of the Orthodox Church in Florence alongside her son Constantine who had died in 1923. Their remains were re-interred in Greece after the restoration of the Monarchy in 1935.

PROVENANCE:  

Princess Helen of Romania

EXHIBITED:  

•Hotel Jean Charpentier, Paris, Exposition P. A. de László, June 1931, no. 6

•M. Knoedler & Company, Inc., London, Royal Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O. 27 November-8 December 1934, no. 13                

LITERATURE:  

•Pesti Hírlap Vasárnapja, 20 January 1933, pp.12-13, László Fülöp: A koros nő bája [The Aging Women’s Charm], ill.

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 285-292

•A Pesti Hírlap Vasárnapja, volume 57, issue 3, 20 January 1935, p. 13, ill.

•ILN, 1 December 1934, p. 866, ill.

•Markenzinis, Styros, A Political History of Contemporary Greece, volume 1 1920-1922, Athens, 1972

•Greece, Prince Nicolas of, Tupeua, Ed., My Fifty Years, Tupeua, 1926 pp. 16-17

•Tantzos, Nicolas, Ed. The Inheritors of Alexander the Great, Atlantic International Publications 1986, p. 17

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 137-138

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 228

•Field, Katherine, Philip Alexius de László; 150th Anniversary Exhibition, de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 52

•László, Lucy de, 1914 diary, private collection, 29 June entry, p. 109

•DLA162-0460, Pesti Hírlap, 27 November 1934, p. 8

KF 2017