11474

Mrs Philip László, née Lucy Madeleine Guinness 1902

Seating three-quarter length to the left, but full-face and looking away to the right, holding a violin against her , the bow in her right hand, wearing a pale gown with ruffled sleeves and collar, a white, blue and yellow stole, and a hat, set against a landscape background

Oil on canvas, 122 x 84.5 cm (48 x 33 ¼ in.)

Inscribed, lower left: László F.E / Rotheneuf / 1902 VIII 

Sitter’s Book I, f. 23: In rememberance [sic] of Rotheneuf / 1902 Aug 22. / Eva Guinness / Constance Guinness / Lucy. M. László / Gábor de Térey / László Fülöp E.

Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, on loan to Farmleigh House

The artist’s wife Lucy Madeleine Guinness was an accomplished violinist and this is the first of a number of paintings and sketches that de László made of her either playing or holding her violin.

A large portrait, this is one of the first works in which de László used a landscape as background. Despite the conscious debt to English eighteenth-century portraiture, the picture was conceived in Rothéneuf, near St Malo, Brittany, in August 1902, during a holiday de László and his wife were taking with two of Lucy’s sisters and the artist’s friend Gábor de Térey [11881]. It was de László’s first holiday since his honeymoon two years earlier, and the first opportunity he had had for some time to indulge in landscape painting. In her diary, the sitter wrote: “He [de László] has begun a portrait of me/ with violin, for which I’ve sat about 9 times – in the afternoons for about 1 ½ to 2 hours, sometimes more. Position v. successful. But I wonder will he really finish it.”^[1]

Two landscape sketches of the same date have been recorded [12012] & [13698], both with a cloudy evening sky that compares with that seen in the present portrait. In addition, a small oil sketch inscribed ‘Rothéneuf 1902’[11064], shows Lucy looking out over a wide landscape at sunset, and, in a plein-air oil study [10623], she is seen seated on a rock in a similar pose wearing the same dress and blue chiffon scarf curled around her arm, as in this finished work. However, the present portrait may be presumed to be almost entirely a studio work and the background is painted as a carefully constructed counterbalance to the figure of Lucy in the foreground.

From Rothéneuf de László travelled to the Loire valley to embark on two important group portraits of the de Gramont family, to be painted “un peu à la façon des tableaux anglais du dix-huitième siècle,”^[2] showing the sitters in a landscape setting [8752].^[3] It would seem likely that in undertaking the present portrait of his wife, de László was preparing himself for these forthcoming commissions.

Lucy Madeleine Guinness was born 22 December 1870, daughter of Henry Guinness of Burton Hall, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin and his wife Emelina Brown of Edinburgh. She and her twin Noel were the tenth and eleventh of the twelve children of the marriage. On 7 June, 1900, she was married to Philip Alexius de László in St Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan. Together they had six children, five sons, Henry, Stephen, Paul, Patrick and John, and a daughter, Eva, the second child, who died in infancy. Lucy died in London on 27 December 1950. She is buried with Philip and other family members in Tilford Churchyard, Surrey.

PROVENANCE:

Given by the sitter to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin,

through the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, 1939

LITERATURE:

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 80, ill. 44

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 58

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 64, ill.

•Lucy de László’s diary, 1902-1911, 9 September 1902 entry, pp. 35-36

SdeL 2008