110695

Alice de Stuers 1920

Half-length slightly to the right, full-face and looking to viewer, a black and gold stole draped around her, wearing a fine gold necklace with a drop pendant and holding a cluster of green stones set in gold in her left hand

Oil on canvas, 90.5 x 60 cm (35 ½ x 25 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / DE WIERSEE / 1920. IX

Private Collection

According to the sitter’s son, the idea for a portrait came about at a dinner party hosted by the Loudon family in which Alice de Stuers was seated next to de László, who asked if she wished to model for him. She was flattered and accepted.

A few days after making a drawing of Alice’s first cousin, Hubert de Stuers [10627], in The Hague, they both went to stay at her house De Wiersse, near Vorden, where de László made a sketch [110693] that pleased her enormously. A few months later the artist arrived with the present portrait, framed and, to the sitter’s consternation, with

what she saw as a double chin. She was upset also in receiving a large bill. It must be assumed that she paid the invoice as she kept the portrait; for which her son has acknowledged great gratitude.

Born on 27 April 1895, Alice de Stuers was the daughter of Victor Eugene Louis de Stuers, of Maastricht, founder of what is now the Netherlands Department for Conservation (Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg). She was an only child and orphaned at an early age. Her father died in 1916 leaving her De Wiersse which had come into the family via her mother Aurelia, Countess vam Limburg Stirum^[1] and her grandmother Jacoba, Baroness van Heeckeren van Kell.

Following her marriage to an Englishman, Major William Edward Gatacre (1878-1959), in 1926, she had the house rebuilt. It is well known for its surrounding parkland today. The gardens have been kept as Alice designed them: a marriage of the formal symmetrical style of the eighteenth century and the English Romantic landscape style of the nineteenth century.

The sitter died in 1988.

EXHIBITED:          

•Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam De László in Holland, Dutch Masterpieces by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), 3 March-5 June 2006, no. 45    

LITERATURE:         

•Grever, Tonko and Annemieke Heuft (Sandra de Laszlo, British ed.), De László in Holland: Dutch Masterpieces by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2006, p. 10, 72, 74, 75, ill. no. 45

CWS 2006