6498

The Honourable Doctor Walter Hines Page, American Ambassador to the Court of St. James's  1917

Half-length to the right, full face to the viewer, wearing red academic robes over a dark suit and wing collar, holding his black velvet cap in both hands in front of him, a red curtain behind to the right

Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 69.9 cm (35 ½ x 27 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: László / LONDON 1917 II 

Laib L9052(7) / C21(13)  

NPG Album 1918-1921, p. 26

Sitters’ Book II, f. 9: Walter Hines Page / [in the artist’s hand: (American Ambassador)] Jan.30.17]            

The Embassy of the United States of America, London

This portrait was commissioned by American friends of the sitter as a gift, to hang at the American Embassy in London with those of Page’s ambassadorial predecessors. The funds raised were presented to the sitter’s wife, who arranged for the Ambassador to sit for the portrait.^[1] 

This is the first of four portraits of American Ambassadors to the Court of St. James’s painted by de László. The other three are; John W. Davis in 1920 [4636], Frank B. Kellogg in 1925 [5917], and Alanson B. Houghton in 1929 [5800]. Two copies of the present portrait made in the 1920s, one by each of de László’s favored copyists, Frederick Cullen [111839] and Sydney Percy Kendrick [111838]. The artist also painted the sitter’s widow in 1924 [111860].

According to one of Page’s biographers, the sitter “was not a handsome man… his nose. Very large, it dominated his face…for some reason Laszlo did not want to do Page, and the ambassador could not understand. Colonel Edward M. House [5693], a friend of Page and confidant of President Wilson, discovered the reason: ‘between us and the angels,’ House wrote to a friend, ‘I found out it was because of Page’s nose...He did not want to put that nose on canvas.”^[2]

The artist wrote to Irwin B. Laughlin [11149], in response to a “spontaneous letter of appreciation” regarding Page’s portrait, “I have painted the portrait with enthusiasm, not exactly fine features, but – but a fine character – and heart. Great was my pleasure to receive yesterday from him a letter too – to receive such letters means further inspiration to my art. I love the picture myself and hope to exhibit it – one day – in more settled days – and atmosphere!”^[3] The sitter’s wife was also pleased with the portrait, writing to the artist, “I think the picture is more and more marvelous all the time.”^[4] An art critic for the New York Times thought the portrait: “one of his best, the simple, rather ruggedly modeled face having received direct and simple treatment from his excessively facile brush.”^[5]

Walter Hines Page was born in Cary, North Carolina, 15 August 1855, the eldest son of Allison Francis Page and his wife Catherine Frances Raboteau. He married Willa Alice Wilson (1858-1942), daughter of Dr William Wilson of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1880 and there were three sons and one daughter of the marriage.

Educated at Trinity College (Duke University), Randolph-Macon College and Johns Hopkins University, Page taught in Louisville before embarking upon a career in journalism. He became editor of The Forum, New York; The Atlantic Monthly, Boston; and The World’s Work, New York. He co-founded the famous publishing company Doubleday, Page, and Co. where he served as partner and vice president from 1900 to 1913.^[6] He published two books, The Building of Old Commonwealths (1902) and the novel The Southerner (1909). Page later received honorary degrees from Randolph-Macon College, Virginia; Tulane University, Louisiana.; Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Sheffield and Cambridge) and Doctor of Civil Law (Oxon.).

In March 1913, President Woodrow Wilson, whom Page had supported in his bid for the presidency in 1912, appointed him as Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Page was strongly pro-British and was credited with helping to bring the United States into the First World War. He resigned his post on account of illness in 1918 and returned to his home in Pinehurst, North Carolina, where he died on 21 December that year. A memorial plaque in his honour was placed in Westminster Abbey, London, in 1923 and de László and Lucy attended the unveiling ceremony.^[7]

PROVENANCE:

Presented to the American Embassy, London 1917

EXHIBITED:

•Grosvenor Gallery, London, Sixth Annual Exhibition of the National Portrait Society, April and May 1917, no. 69

•The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, Paintings by Philip A. de László, 26 February-20 March 1921, no. 33

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Paintings by Philip A. de László, 4-16 April 1921, no. 3

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies By Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1923, no. 25

LITERATURE:

•“Ambassador Page’s Portrait Finished,” The New York Times, March 15, 1917

•Letter from de László to Irwin B. Laughlin, 14 March 1917, Herbert Hoover Library, Irwin B. Laughlin Papers, “Page, Walter H., 1914-1917”

•The World’s Work, February 1919, ill.

•Howe, Mark Antony De Wolfe, The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers, 1919, p. 94, ill.

•The New York Times, 10 April 1921, Sec. 6, p. 8

•Field, Hamilton Easter, “Comment on the Arts, by the Editor,” The Arts, April 1921, p. 48

•Country Life, November 1922, p. 26, ill.

•Landmark, July 1923, p. 3, ill.

•The World Today, vol. XLV, no. 7, June 1925, front cover, ill.

•Hendrick, Burton J., The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, 1926, ill, frontis.; p. 426

•The New York Times, 6 May 1928, ill.

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 308, 367

•Henderson, Archibald, North Carolina, the Old North State and the New, 1941, p. 815

•Gregory, Ross, Walter Hines Page: Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, The University Press of Kentucky, 1970, p. 10

•Cooper, Jr., John Milton, Walter Hines Page: The Southerner as American, 1855-1918, Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies, University of North Carolina Press, 1977, p. 359, ill., p. 362

•Riley, Sam G., American Magazine Journalists, 1900-1960, 1990, p. 261, ill.

•DLA049-0004, letter from Mrs. Walter Hines Page to de László [undated]

•DLA106-0122, letter from Boylston Adams Beal to de László, 16 May 1923

•DLA 1918 parcel, The World’s Work, ill.

MD 2016