3730

Lady Broughton, née Vera Edyth Griffith-Boscawen 1922

Seated full-length, wearing a sleeveless evening dress and holding a necklace with a pendant or netsuke with a tassel

Oil on canvas, 101 x 59 cm (39 ⅜ x 23 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1922 VIII   

Laib L10881 (529) / C3 (12)  

NPG Album 1921-23, p. 29

Sitters’ Book II, f. 31: Vera Broughton Aug 1st 1922

Private Collection

This portrait was commissioned by Lady Broughton on behalf of her husband in May 1922. A month later, she sent de László a sketch of the dress she proposed to wear during the sittings: “I think it would make a very simple undating dress in a pearly white? I will have it made fairly well in to the figure as you like that style.”^[1] However, a letter dated 13 July 1922 suggests that the artist did not think this quite satisfactory and made a sketch for a dress of his own design. But it seems he subsequently changed his mind, proposing that Lady Broughton should wear a white wrap-around gown with frills at the neck and wrists: “Have you then given up the idea of painting me as you had decided when you did the small sketch? I cannot quite see myself looking very nice in the dress Lady Richard Wellesley was painted in [4142].”^[2] De László usually had a clear idea of the gown in which he wished to represent his sitters, but considering Lady Broughton’s cool reception to his last suggestion, and the gown worn in the present portrait, it seems the artist reverted to his original design.

De László chose an 18th-century landscape frame for this portrait, which dictated the picture’s unusually small proportions. As was his custom, he painted the portrait with the canvas in the frame on the easel in his studio.  It was then removed to allow the artist to finish broadly to the edge of the canvas, but a thick ridge of paint remains on the canvas at the edge of this frame. De László’s honorarium for the portrait was £500, despite Lady Broughton’s repeated attempts to reduce this figure.^[3]

Vera Edyth Griffith-Boscawen, the youngest daughter of Boscawen Trevor Griffith-Boscawen of Trevalyn Hall, Rossett, Denbighshire, was born on 2 January 1894. In 1913, she married Sir Henry John (“Jock”) Delves Broughton, 11th Bt., who succeeded his father to the baronetcy in 1914. Together they had two children: Evelyn Delves (born 1915), and Rosamund (born 1917), but their marriage was unhappy. Vera had affairs with the 3rd Earl of Wharncliffe and the 1st Baron Sherwood. She finally left her husband in 1935 for Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne [3194], and the marriage was dissolved in 1940. Sir Jock remarried another femme fatale, in the person of Diana Caldwell, in November 1940, but only a few months later, he was involved in the infamous “Happy Valley Affair.” He was accused and acquitted of the death of his wife’s lover, Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll. Sir Jock’s suicide a few months after the trial fuelled further speculation as to whether he had indeed committed the crime or not.^[4] 

Vera was an insatiable explorer and game hunter, travelling a great deal with Walter Guinness. Walkabout,^[5] which she wrote with him, bears testimony of this close association. This book, illustrated with her photographs, was based on a six-month trip which covered some 30,000 miles and took them to Burma, Malaysia, Sarawak, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Australia, and Papua New Guinea, where, she claimed, she ate the flesh of a tribesman. She subsequently listed herself as a cannibal in Who’s Who. Until the year 2000, she also held the record for the largest tuna ever caught, off Scarborough, in Yorkshire, with a fish weighing some 700 lbs. Famous for her elegance, Lady Broughton was also considered one of the best-dressed women of her time. Her considerable collection of Pigmy furniture was donated to the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. Lady Broughton never remarried, and died in 1968. Another portrait of her was painted circa 1918 by Sir James Jebusa Shannon (1862-1923); it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1918 (82 x 54 in.).

PROVENANCE:         

Doddington Park, Cheshire, the Broughton family home;

Lady Lovat, the daughter of the sitter (Beaufort Castle, Invernesshire);

Mrs Detmar Blow, granddaughter of the sitter;

Sold privately in 2004

LITERATURE:

•DLA055-0125, letter from Lady Broughton to de László, 13 June 1922                

•DLA055-0128, letter from Lady Broughton to de László, 13 July 1922

We are grateful to James Mulraine of Historical Portraits, Ackermann & Johnson and Ronnie MacAskill for their assistance in recording this picture

CC 2008