6333

Mrs Joseph Grafton Minot and her son Grafton 1898

Mrs Minot seated full-length on a carved wooden and upholstered chair, wearing a pale silk dress with fitted bodice and full skirt, chiffon cuffs and a frilled chiffon wrap about the shoulders, and a dark plumed hat; Master Grafton stands full-length at his mother's right side, wearing a sailor suit, black buckle shoes, and holding a cap in his right hand, another chair to the left

Oil on canvas, 174.6 x 121 cm (68 ¾ x 47 ⅛ in.)

Inscribed lower left: László F.E. / 1898 IX. Ryde, Isle of Wight.   

Sitters’ Book I, f. 75: Honora Winthrop Minot / Joseph Grafton Minot 5th April 1908. Boston / U.S.A. / Grafton Winthrop Minot

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California, USA

De László met Mrs Minot’s father-in-law, Charles Henry Minot, the Surveyor of the Port of Boston, in Budapest in the early summer of 1898. Mr Minot had just seen two portraits by the artist at the Paris Salon^[1] and, as he explained to de László, he wished the artist to accompany him to Boston with a view to painting his daughter-in-law and her son. Owing to outstanding commissions in Europe, the artist was unable to agree to travel to Boston; however he did promise to visit Ryde on the Isle of Wight, where Mr Minot would be taking a house with his son and daughter-in-law, in August.^[2] This was to be de László’s first visit to England and, as he wrote to Lucy Guinness, he was particularly “delighted at the prospect of seeing the fine portraits from the beginning of this century,”^[3] in London.

De László kept to his promise, finishing the commission in September 1898 whilst spending five weeks with the Minot family at Berwick Lodge on the Isle of Wight. The portrait was one of the largest and most ambitious pictures the artist had completed to date, and owes much to Sargent, perhaps deliberately, given his American patron; indeed, Sargent would draw Mrs Minot, in 1915. Despite the constraints of the strong pyramidal composition, the portrait shows a confidence and newly found freedom pointing to de László’s mature style.

So pleased was Mr Minot’s son with the picture, that he wrote to the artist describing it as “perfectly superb”; and that “We have had three afternoon receptions in order to show the picture to our friends, all of whom declared it to be a wonderful work.”^[4] However, ten years later, on a visit to Boston, it was with some interest that de László took the opportunity to see the picture once more, concluding: “I must confess that there were many things in it that I would have liked to change.”^[5] Mr and Mrs J. Grafton Minot, and their son Grafton marked the occasion of the artist’s visit by signing his sitters’ book^[6]; de László remarking in his reminiscences that Mrs Minot was “still very handsome.”^[7]

De László also sketched Joseph Grafton Minot [111505] during his stay at Ryde; and Honora Winthrop Mason [6279], Mrs Minot’s niece, would sit to the artist in 1925, the portrait remaining in Mrs Minot’s possession until the 1930s.

Honora Elizabeth Temple Winthrop was born on the Isle of Wight on 13 March 1868, the second of three daughters of Thomas Lindall Winthrop (1834-1920) of Boston, Massachusetts, and his second wife Charlotte Ann, née Atkinson (1836-1883). Her maternal grandfather was Rev. John Brecks Atkinson, rector of Kingston, Isle of Wight. On 10 June 1890 Honora married on the Isle of Wight, Joseph Grafton Minot (born 1858) of Boston, son of Charles Henry Minot and his wife Maria Josephine Grafton. She died in California at the age of ninety on 30 November 1958.

Their only child, Grafton Winthrop, was born in New York on 17 October 1892. He joined the diplomatic service and while serving at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin married, in New York, on 24 July 1915 Constance Gardner (born 1894), the daughter of Congressman Augustus Gardner, and granddaughter of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. They had a son and a daughter but divorced in 1922. He married secondly Anne Kountze.

PROVENANCE:          

Given to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, U.S.A., by Mr Grafton Minot in 1965

LITERATURE:         

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 161-3, 256

•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien Nr. 106, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, p. 42

•Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, vol. V, Vienna: Artaria & Co., p. 198, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 51-52, 111

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 124, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1908 diary, 5 April entry, p. 120

•László, Philip de, 1933-1934 diary, private collection, 2 January 1934 entry, p. 62

CWS & MB 2008