5943

The Marchioness of Sligo, née Agatha Stewart Hodgson 1915

Half-length slightly to the left and full face to the viewer, wearing a dark stole with purple trim over a pale dress, a black turban style headdress with black chiffon draped over her shoulders, drop-earrings and a double stranded pearl necklace

Oil on canvas, 92 x 71.3 cm (36 ¼ x 28 in.)

Inscribed lower left: P.A de László / 915. may

Laib L7687(686) / C25(34) and L7965(259) / C29(8)

NPG Album 1913-15, p. 84

Sitters’ Book I, f. 101: Agatha Sligo April 29th /15

Private Collection

In February 1916 de László painted the sitter’s husband, George Ulick Browne, 6th Marquess of Sligo, as a pair to the present portrait [5946]. Both were framed by Emile Remy, the artist’s preferred framer for over twenty-five years. De László also painted Lady Sligo’s only son, Ulick de Burgh, Earl of Altamont [6353], in service dress in 1917, her daughter Eileen, Countess Stanhope, in 1921 [7209] and son-in-law, The Honourable Michael Knatchbull-Hugessen in 1914 [2894].

Agatha Stewart Hodgson was born 9 May 1866, the daughter of James Stewart Hodgson, of Lythe Hill, Haslemere, Surrey, and his wife Gertrude Forsyth. Their London home was at 24 Prince’s Gate, close to de László’s at number 3, following their move from Vienna in 1907 to live in England.  

On 12 October 1887 she married George Ulick Browne (1857-1935), at St Bartholomew’s, her local church in Haslemere. There were four children of the marriage: Eileen (born 1889), Moya (born 1892), Doreen (born 1896) and Ulick (born 1898). In 1913 her husband succeeded his father as 6th Marquess of Sligo.

The Marchioness and her husband were keen fishermen and enjoyed travelling to Scotland each season. They shared a love of the theatre and gardening and created extensive gardens at Westport House, their home in County Mayo, Ireland. She journeyed to the Himalayas to collect plants and trees and was elected a member of the Royal Geographical Society. Indefatigable into her seventies and eighties, she visited her daughter and son-in-law in Bengal while they were posted there 1933-1939. Her grandson recalled her being carried through the countryside from India to Nepal in a sedan chair while looking for rhododendrons.^[1] 

Lady Sligo died 4 January 1965 in London, following some thirty years of widowhood.

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the family

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 302, 364

•Sligo, The Marquess of, Westport House and the Brownes, Moorland Publishing, 1981, p. 70, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 149, 188

KF 2021