10770

Henriette Cora Johanna de Beaufort-van Riemsdijk 1920

Bust-length slightly to the right, head turned almost full-face and looking to the viewer, wearing spectacles, a low-necked white blouse just indicated

Oil on board 73.4  x 50.8 cm (29 x 20 in.)

Inscribed lower right: My wedding souvenir / after twelf [sic]  years / amsterdam 1920 May / P.A. de László.

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 15: H. G. J. de Beaufort / van Riemsdijk 23-5. 1920. / Amsterdam. Rijksmuseum

Private Collection

Maurits de Beaufort wrote to de László on 27 May 1920 to say how happy he was with the portrait of his wife,  Henriette Cora Johanna, née van Riemsdijk, and that he had ordered a frame to de László’s design from the same studio that had framed the portrait of Catharina Francken [110667]. De László preferred to choose the frame and paint the portrait in it, as he considered the two to be integral to one another, but with commissions from abroad this was not always possible.  In such cases he designed a frame for the client to have made; in this way the painting and frame worked together. From the same letter it is clear that de László maintained loyal contact with his old clients.^[1]

Jonkvrouwe Henriette Cora Johanna van Riemsdijk, the fifth child of Barthold van Riemsdijk [111222] and his wife Johanna, was born in The Hague on 25 October 1883. She married Maurits de Beaufort (1882-1958) in Amsterdam on 28 April 1908.

The sitter died on 20 June 1975 at de Heimstede, a large house in Doorn.

LITERATURE:        

•Grever, Tonko and Annemieke Heuft (Sandra de Laszlo, British ed.), De László in Holland: Dutch Masterpieces by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2006, pp. 50, 54, 66, 69, ill. no. 37

•DLA055-0030, letter from Maurits de Beaufort to de László, 27 May 1920

•DLA082-0167, letter from Johanna de Beaufort to de László, 23 February 1921

CWS 2006