4848

Comtesse Robert de Pourtalès, née Marie Elisabeth van Rijck van Rietwyk 1914

Half length slightly to the right, head turned in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a black chiffon gown or stole wrapped round her, and a large brimmed black hat decorated with ostrich feathers, a long string of pearls round her neck and held in her right hand, which is raised to her breast

Oil on board, 90.2 x 69 cm (35 ½ x 27 ⅛ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P.A. de László / Paris / 1914. I  

Sitters’ Book I, f. 94: Van Rijck Pourtalès / 17 janvier 1914 / Paris 

Private Collection

De László painted the present portrait in Paris in January 1914. He was staying with his great friend Armand, duc de Guiche [11801], who allowed him the use of his studio at 42 Avenue Henri Martin. The artist was in high demand and painted a number of important sitters during this same visit: Vice-President Jean Dupuy [4479], the Russian Ambassador Baron Conrad Meyendorff [4842], his wife née Nadine Vladimirnova Louguinine [10138], and Mercedes Mantels de Bruyn [4822].

The artist must have been delighted by comtesse de Pourtalès’ vivacious beauty and asked her to sit for him again in September and October that year. He made four further study portraits of her in London [7000] [4852] [4854], not as commissions but for his own artistic enjoyment. He presented one [4850] to his sitter in thanks for giving him the sittings.  

Marie Elisabeth van Rijck van Rietwyk was born on 18 March 1886 in Paris, the daughter of Willem Van Rijck from Batavia (1824-1898) and Clara Hoevenar Van Geldrop from Geldrop (1848-1932). After the early death of her father she and her younger siblings William and Clara were raised by their mother. On 25 June 1906 in Paris she married comte Robert de Pourtalès (1874-1917), son of Albert de Pourtalès and Henriette Joly de Bammeville. The family resided at Château de Bandeville, Saint-Cyr-sous-Dourdan, Essonne. They had two sons, Gérard (born 1908) and James (born 1911).  

She died at home, 9 rue Louis David, Paris, on 17 January 1917 and she is buried in the cemetery at Passy.

EXHIBITED:        

•Royal Society of British Artists, Autumn Exhibition, 1914, no. 76 b

•Grosvenor Gallery, London, Fifth Annual Exhibition of the National Portrait Society, February and March 1916, no. 70

•South Wales Art Society, Cardiff, May 1916, no. 43

•Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1921, Paintings by Philip A. de László, February - March, 1921, no. 4

LITERATURE:        

•Rutter, Owen. Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 282

•Town & Country, 10 April 1921. New York, Paris, London: The Stuyvesant Company, 1921, p. 36, ill.

•DLA089-0047, Evening News, 23 February 1916        

•DLA089-0027, Daily Telegraph, 26 February 1916

•DLA089-0043, The Lady’s Pictorial, 11 March 1916

KF 2021