3562

Alfred Lys Baldry 1918

Half-length in profile to the left, wearing a black Spanish cloak with a ruff and holding a sword

Oil on canvas, 80 x 64.2 cm (31 ½ x 25 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower right: László / 1918 Nov. 16   

Laib L15508 (812) / C2 (6A)  

NPG Album 1927-1929, p. 23b

Sitters’ Book II, f. 6: A. L. Baldry   June 20th 1916

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 12: A.L. Baldry. / Dec. 14th 1918.

Private Collection

At the time this portrait was painted, de László was under house arrest in a nursing home at Ladbroke Gardens, following a nervous breakdown at Holloway, where he was interned for more than six months. Having been deprived of his paints during that time, he was now free to paint again. Lucy de László noted this portrait in her diary: “Today Mr Baldry went to P’s after Breakfast & remained with him till about 6.O’C. When I came to spend the evg about that hour, the picture was finished. Most interesting & classical – interesting light effects! It was only last time Mr B. posed that P. began this picture - - He says he cd not paint the pictures he used to any more – in the conventional light of a north light studio – “I have quite changed my ideas.”^[1]

De László also completed a second portrait of Baldry in Spanish costume in December 1918 [3564] and a few months later another oil [3567] and a portrait drawing [111068], both in profile to the left like the present picture.

With his aquiline profile, long white hair and beard, Baldry makes the perfect subject for this fine example of de László’s appreciation of Spanish portraiture. De László was known to admire the Spanish school of painters and Velázquez in particular. He kept a considerable wardrobe of Spanish costumes in his studio and quite frequently asked his children, his friend Baldry and other sitters with Spanish connections, to sit for him in various types of ruff and hat, or cloak and doublet, or even an entire black velvet costume with stockings and buckled shoes. He also liked to use black and gold Spanish frames to offset these romantic portraits which were painted by and large for his own pleasure.

Alfred Lys Baldry was an artist and art critic who wrote his first article on Philip de László in 1911, after the artist's successful exhibition at Agnew’s that year. He soon became de László’s firm friend and the only visitor outside the family allowed at the Ladbroke Gardens nursing home during the dark days of internment. Baldry, himself of Spanish descent, was born in Torquay in 1858, the son of Alfred Baldry. In 1877 he won a scholarship to The South Kensington School of Art and later was a student of Albert Moore for four years. He first exhibited in the early 1880s and continued to do so throughout his life.^[2] In 1887 he married Annie Lilian Brocklehurst. They lived at Wolmer Wood in Buckinghamshire and had one son.

As well as writing frequently for The Studio magazine, Baldry was the art critic of The Globe from 1893-1908 and London art critic of the Birmingham Post for about thirty years. He also made contributions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.^[3] He published some eight art books, including monographs on Albert Moore (1894), Sir John Everett Millais (1899), Hubert von Herkomer (1901) and G. H. Boughton, R.A. (1904).^[4] De László painted a number of portraits of Baldry over the years, some very informal, and in 1920 painted both his wife and his son [3559] & [2993]. Baldry authored several articles on de László, including “Some Recent Portraits by Philip A. László,” The Studio, September 1911; “Recent Portraits by Philip A. de László,” The Studio, August 1916; “Some Paintings and Drawings by Mr. P. A. de László,” The Studio, February 1921; “Philip de László: Painter of Beautiful Women,” Woman’s Journal, April 1928; and “Philip A. de László: An Appreciation,” The London Studio, February 1938.

In 1933, de László made one of his very few portrait busts of his friend [3583], in an almost identical pose to the present portrait. A. L. Baldry died in 1939.

PROVENANCE:          

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:        

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 81

•Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, 2024, no. 17

LITERATURE:          

•Bury, Adrian, “The Art of Philip de László: An Appreciation,” Apollo, July 1933, ill. p. 22

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 333

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 147, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 168, ill. 95

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 120

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, pp. 81, 120, ill. p. 80

•László, Lucy de, 1918 diary, private collection, 1 November entry, p. 306

CWS 2008