6702

DESTROYED 

Major the Honourable Cyril Myles Brabazon Ponsonby 1915

Half-length in three-quarter profile to the right, wearing a great coat over his Service Dress

Oil on board, [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: P A de László / 1915 April 30th

Laib L7679 (396) / C22(3): Captain Ponsonby

NPG Album 1913-15, p. 72

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 95: Myles Ponsonby. April 23rd 1915.

Major Cyril Ponsonby sat for his portrait just five months before his death in France during the First World War. Like so many other serving officers painted by de László at this time, he was on leave and had only a short time to sit for the artist. Portraits such as these could be completed in one or two sittings of two to three hours, making the artist a popular choice among service men. He also reduced his fees to £100 for a study portrait of this type, approximately half the regular fee. De László also painted the sitter’s brother, Lord Duncannon [2431], in service dress in May 1915.

De László met the sitter’s elder brother, who had by then succeeded as Earl Bessborough, at a cocktail party in 1936. He mentioned the encounter in his diary and the loss of the present picture in 1923 in a fire which destroyed much of Bessborough House in Ireland.^[1] 

De László also painted a portrait of the sitter’s wife, née Rita Longfield in 1914 [6703], a study portrait of her sister Nora [3032] in 1916, the wife of his son Arthur [7176] in 1932 and Lady Sysonby [2797], wife of Sir Frederick Ponsonby, of  a junior branch of the family.

The Honourable Cyril Myles Brabazon Ponsonby was born 16 November 1881, the second son of the 8th Earl of Bessborough (1851-1920) and his wife Blanche Vere Guest (1847-1919). He attended Harrow and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, where he was gazetted 11 August 1900 as a Second Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards. He served in the South African War, taking part in the operations in Cape Colony in 1902. From 1903-1905 he was ADC to Sir Henry Blake, Governor of Ceylon. He also served in the same capacity to Field Marshal the Duke of Connaught [4117] from 1907-1909. Ponsonby was awarded the Royal Victorian Order (fourth class) in 1909 and was a Knight of the Order of the Sword of Sweden and of the Order of Isabella the Catholic of Spain.    

On 20 July 1911 at St George’s, Hanover Square, Ponsonby married Rita Narcissa Longfield, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Montifort John Courtenay Longfield of Castle Mary, Co. Cork and his wife Elizabeth Armstrong. There was one son of the marriage: Arthur Mountifort Longfield Ponsonby (born 1912), for whom the Duke of Connaught was named sponsor.

From September 1914 Ponsonby was part of the British Expeditionary Force in France. He was killed 28 September 1915 while leading the 4th Battalion Grenadier Guards on the outskirts of Lens in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. His burial place is unknown and his name is included on the Loos Memorial at Dud Corner Cemetery.  

PROVENANCE:

8th Earl of Bessborough;

Destroyed by fire, 1923

EXHIBITED:

•Grosvenor Gallery, London, Fifth Annual Exhibition of the National Portrait Society, February-March 1916, no. 31             

LITERATURE:

•László, Philip de, March-July 1936 diary, private collection, 26 May entry, p. 96

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

KF 2020