4535

Lady Alastair Graham, née Lady Meriel Bathurst 1925

Seated half-length in profile to the left, wearing a peacock blue dress with slashed sleeves, showing cream silk lining and a necklace, holding a spray of lilies, all against a dark background

Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 71.2 cm (35 ¾ x 27  ⅝ in.)

Indistinctly inscribed lower left: de László / 1925. VII   

Laib L11765 (111) / C9 (12): Lady Alastair Graham

NPG 1919-25 Album, p. 13

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 45: Meriel Graham July 8. 1925.

Private Collection

The present portrait was commissioned in 1925 by Lady Alastair Graham’s mother, Countess Bathurst [3544], to replace the first portrait de László painted of her daughter [4536] in 1920. Although hung in Lady Bathurst’s home, that painting belonged to the sitter’s brother and sister-in-law, Lord and Lady Apsley, who wished to hang it in their own house. In a letter dated 24 May 1925, Lady Bathurst explained to de László her daughter Meriel Graham would come and stay with her for a week from 20 June, and made the following suggestions: “If we can get a suitable dress from Simmonds can she sit to you the week of the 22nd? This is going to be my own picture, may it be the same size as the one you painted of her before, as it is to go in the same place when the Apsleys remove the one which belongs to them?”^[1]

De László rarely painted portraits in profile and it seems that by doing so in this particular instance, he wished to pay homage to Lady Alastair’s delicate beauty, her Christianity and to Florentine renaissance portraiture. His sitter modestly remonstrated with the artist: “You have no idea what a sunburnt rustic you are proposing to dress up in ivory satin! I look far more like a Hogarth than a Bronzino I assure you.”^[2]

This comparison might have prompted de László to go a step further, and to paint her in a dress with strong medieval overtones,^[3] very similar indeed to those worn by Bronzino’s sitters. As for the composition of the portrait itself, and the purity of Lady Alastair’s profile, it evokes the portrait of Simonetta Vespucci by Piero di Cosimo, as well as works by Ghirlandaio.

The sitter’s family was clearly very pleased with the resulting portrait: “I wish you could have heard all the nice things that the Duchess of Montrose said about Meriel’s picture when she and her son (Meriel’s husband) came to luncheon with me yesterday. Both agreed that your picture was not only a beautiful thing in itself but that it was Meriel herself, a most startling resemblance. I look at it from my writing table every morning and it gives me immense pleasure.”^[4]

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4536].

PROVENANCE:          

The Countess Bathurst, wife of the 7th Earl

EXHIBITED:          

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László M.V.O., June 1923, no. 13

•Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., London, Exhibition of Paintings by Philip A. de László M.V.O., In Aid of the London Hospital and the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution, November-December, 1937, no. 7

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 103, ill.

•BADA Art & Antiques Fair, London, Philip de László: 150th Anniversary Exhibition, 2019, no. 15

LITERATURE:

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 193, ill. 107

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 137

•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. 81, ill. p. 80

•DLA056-051, letter from Countess Lilias Bathurst to de László, 24 May 1925

•DLA069-0073, letter from Lady Alastair Graham to de László, 6 June 1925

•DLA069-0071, letter from Lady Alastair Graham to de László, 28 June 1925

•DLA056-0053, letter from de László’s secretary to Countess Lilias Bathurst, 24

September 1925

•DLA055-0089, letter from Countess Lilias Bathurst to de László, undated

CC & CWS 2008