4366

Stephen Philip de Laszlo, ‘Top O' the Morning’ 1912

Half-length to the left, seated at a table looking to the viewer, wearing a white shirt and blue tie, holding up a cup in his right hand and a pastry in his left, the table covered in a white cloth, a corner cupboard behind

Oil on canvasboard, 53.4 x 43.2 cm (21 x 17 in.)

Inscribed lower left: P A de László 1912 August   

Laib L6419 (622) / C19 (21A)  

NPG 1903-14 Album, p. 36

NPG 1912-16 Album, p. 7 where labelled by the artist: our son Stephen / ... stuour / 1912

Private Collection

“On the following morning the summer sun was shining, and as he entered the breakfast-room of his cottage among the Surrey pine-woods his young son Stephi waved his coffee cup towards him in joyous welcome of his father’s unexpected arrival. The sunlight and the buoyancy of the welcome stirred all the artist in Laszlo.”^[1]

Stephen was born in Vienna on 6 July 1904 and so would have been just eight years old when this portrait was painted. The artist and his family often went to Surrey to stay with the Troutons or to visit Lucy’s sister Eva [5437] who lived at The Willows, at Tilford. In the summertime or at Easter, the de Lászlós would frequently rent a cottage in the country. The boys later recalled how much they enjoyed their freedom from their much more formal London existence. The present painting was executed at one of those cottages: Pine Wood, in Churt.^[2] During this visit, the artist also made a landscape sketch of Churt Common, dated August 1912 [11658].

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4375].        

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. 76

LITERATURE:        

•Meister der Farbe: Europäische Kunst der Gegenwart, tenth year, vol. VIII, E.A.Seemann, Leipzig, 1913, ill.

•Williams, Oakley, ed., Selections from the Work of P.A. de László, foreword by Comte Robert de Montesquiou, Hutchinson, London, 1921, p. 177-8, ill. opp. p. 177

•“A Child’s Day: Its Moods Activities, and Varied Occupations Pictured by Modern Artists,” The Mentor, December 1923, p. 20

•Clifford, Derek. The Paintings of P. A. de Laszlo, London, 1969, monochrome ill. pl. no. 28

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 143, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 167

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 208, ill.

•DLA120-0010, envelope of a letter from Princess Henry of Battenberg to de László, 24 August 1912

CC & CWS 2008