DLA095-0123  Transcription

‘Art Exhibitions. Portraiture of Mr. Philip de Laszlo’, Nottingham Guardian, 28 June 1924

The portraiture of Mr. Philip de Laszlo is in request with a vast number of notable people. The present collection of 50 canvases on view at the French Gallery represents mainly a year’s work, and among his sitters are Pope Pius XI. [6690], the Queen of Roumania [3200], Sir Roger Keyes [5990], Lord Lansdowne [5959], Sir George Henschel [5594], Sir Ernest Rutherford [6819], the Marquis of Londonderry [6136], the Marquis of Sligo [5946], Lord Devonport [4573], a whole galaxy of society women, his Honour Judge Turner [11385], and Sir John Maffey, our Chief Commissioner on the North-West Frontier [6251]. Mr. de Laszlo brings to bear on his task as social portraitist qualities which must be allowed amply to deserve his popularity with well-known sitters. Foremost among these qualities is effectiveness, both in his grasp of personal appearance, and in unlaboured, animate pictorial expression thereof. Moreover, his art emphasises the real claims of the sitter on our admiration whether it be the romantic queenliness of Queen Marie, in her head-dress of jewels and gold tissue [3200], the personality and state of the Pope [6690], the inward qualities of the man of action, in Sir Roger Keyes [5590] and Sir John Maffey [6251], beauty and youth in a number of bright canvases, beauty and gracious old age, in one or two, scholarship, the legal genius, and so on.

MD 

20/11/2007