5203

Study portrait

Mrs Theodore Roosevelt, née Edith Kermit Carow 1908

Head and shoulders in profile to the left, three-quarter face, wearing a high-necked black blouse, trimmed with blue

Verso: Unfinished portrait of the sitter, head and shoulders to the right, three quarter face

Oil on board, 68.6 x 54.6 cm (27 x 21 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P.A. de László / White House / 1908 II Washington [pencil]

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 80: Edith Kermit Roosevelt / March 22nd 1908

Roosevelt Home, Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York

It was at the suggestion of his friend the British M.P. Arthur Lee (later Viscount Lee of Fareham) [11019] that the sitter’s husband President Theodore Roosevelt agreed to sit to de László at the White House in February and March 1908 [5201], and the present portrait also dates from this time. When Otto von Schleinitz’s book on de László came out in the spring of 1913, a signed copy was sent to the President; this gave Roosevelt an opportunity to express his enthusiasm for these two portraits:

“Our good friend Mr. Lee has just handed me your volume. I am so glad to get it. You must let me congratulate you upon the remarkable career you have had, and upon all that you are now doing. Your picture of me is the one I like best, and I have it in my library, where I can look at it now, and the charming sketch you made of Mrs. Roosevelt, the only picture of her that I have ever liked.”^[1]

De László painted a second, less formal, portrait of the President after he left office, in 1910 [5205]. The style and composition of that of the study are very similar to the present one. He also later painted portraits of the Roosevelts’ son, Kermit [5152], and his wife, née Belle Willard [5153], in 1917 and 1914, respectively.

Edith Kermit Carow was born in Norwich, Connecticut, on 6 August 1861, the second child of Charles Tyler Carow (1825-1883), a merchant, and his wife Gertrude Tyler (1836-1895), of New York City and Connecticut. The Carows were family friends of the Roosevelts and Edith was a childhood friend of Corinne Roosevelt, Theodore’s younger sister. A quiet and serious girl, she sitter was educated with the Roosevelt children by their governess and then attended a finishing school.

Theodore and Edith were childhood sweethearts prior to his studies at Harvard, but it was not until after the death of Theodore’s first wife in 1884 that they married in London in 1886. Edith actively supported her husband in both his public service and political roles and from 1901 presided with grace and distinction as First Lady at the White House. A noted conversationalist, she was also a talented musician. When not at the White House, they lived at Sagamore Hill, in Oyster Bay, Long Island. There were five children of the marriage: Theodore Jr (born 1887), Kermit (born 1889), Ethel (born 1891), Archie (born 1894) and Quentin (born 1897).^[2] 

Mrs Roosevelt was the first First Lady to catalogue the contents of the White House. She began the practice of hanging the portraits of First Ladies in the East Corridor and established a collection of past presidents’ porcelain, traditions which have continued to this day. After her husband’s death in 1919, she published his Spanish-American War diary and travelled extensively. She bore the deaths of three of her sons with characteristic fortitude, taking much joy in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She wrote a book about her family, American Backlogs: The Story of Gertrude Tyler and Her Family, 1660-1860 (1928), and contributed to the book Cleared for Strange Ports.

Mrs Roosevelt died at Sagamore Hill on 30 September 1948, aged eighty-seven, and is buried beside her husband in the family plot in Youngs’ Cemetery in Oyster Bay.

The sitter was also painted by Theobald Chartran (1849-1907) in 1902^[3] and drawn by John Singer Sargent in 1921.

PROVENANCE:

Acquired by the Theodore Roosevelt Association with its purchase of Sagamore Hill, and its contents, 1950

EXHIBITED:

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Exhibition of Portraits by P. A. Laszlo, 9-16 April 1908

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 251, 254, 255, 260, 278

•Morison, E., ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 1954, VI, p. 995

•Morris, Sylvia, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady, Modern Library Paperbacks, 2001, facing p. 326, ill., p. 344

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 110

•Boera, A. Richard, ”The Rest of the Story: “Official” Copies of Philip de László’s 1908 Painting of Theodore Roosevelt (and More), Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Volume XXXVII, Number 4, Fall 2016, p. 27

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 120, ill.

•Field, Katherine ed., Gábor Bellák and Beáta Somfalvi, Philip de László (1869-1937); "I am an Artist of the World", Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2019, p. 9

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 10

•László, Lucy de, 1902-1911 diary, 22 March 1908 entry, p. 141

•László, Lucy de, 1908 diary, 22 March entry, p. 106

MD 2013