4792

Lady King, née Geraldine Adelaide Hamilton Harmsworth 1933

Half-length turned slightly to the right, looking full face to the viewer, wearing a lace stole over her dark dress, two strands of pearls and a brooch at her breast

Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 70.5 cm (35½ x 27¾ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László 1933 II  

Laib L17680(797) / C14(20A)  Lady King

NPG 1933 Album, p. 12

Sitters’ Book II, f. 74: Geraldine King 26th Jan. 1933

Private Collection

In 1933 de László was commissioned by the sitter’s younger brother, Viscount Rothermere, to paint seven portraits of members of his family and charged an honorarium of 200 guineas per picture.^[1] He wrote to Lady King 22 December 1932 to enquire when she would be able to sit in January 1933, indicating that he would need three or four sittings to complete the present picture.^[2]

The sitter had very beautiful hands and her family were disappointed by the artist’s somewhat cursory treatment of them in this portrait.  It was generally agreed, however, that it was a good likeness. The sitter’s daughter wrote to the artist: “how intensely I have enjoyed the privilege of seeing you paint my mother’s picture, I had never forgotten the pleasure it was to watch your portrait of my Grandmother [6909] grow an incredible 20 years ago. They are both family treasures.”^[3]

Geraldine Adelaide Hamilton Harmsworth was born 27 December 1866 the eldest daughter of Alfred Harmsworth (1837-1889) and Geraldine Mary Maffett (1838-1925) [6909]. Her siblings Viscount Northcliffe [4764], and Viscount Rothermere [4759] were proprietors of the Times and Daily Mail and she had helped them in their early careers, carrying out research and preparing draft copies for their periodicals.  

She married 12 February 1891 in India, Lucas White King (1856-1925), eldest son of the Deputy Surgeon General, Henry King, principal of the medical school in Madras. Lucas King had entered the Indian Civil Service in 1878 and they remained until his retirement in 1905. The family then moved to Dublin, where King became Professor of Oriental Languages at Trinity College. They had seven children: Nora (born 1892), Sheila (born 1893), Lucas (born 1894), Enid (born 1897), Cecil (born 1901), Alfred (born 1902) and his twin Geraldine Spencer.  

Lucas King was knighted in 1919. After his death in 1925, Lady King continued to live at Runnymede Park, near Egham, Surrey, and at Roebuck House, Aboyne, in Aberdeenshire, where she died 7 October 1945.

PROVENANCE:  

C.H. King, son of the sitter

LITERATURE:

•DLA073-0154, letter from de László to Lady King, 22 December 1932

•DLA084-0015, letter from Viscount Rothermere to de László, 10 May 1933

•DLA073-0153, letter from Enid Stokes to de László, 16 February 1933

KF 2013