6175

RECTO

Study portrait

Arthur Hamilton Lee 1908

Head and shoulders in three-quarter profile to the right, his head turned and looking to the viewer, wearing a white shirt and grey jacket

Oil on board, 67.3 x 48.9 cm (26 ½ x 19 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower left: To Mrs. Arthur Lee / in remembrance of Glendoe / 1908  Aug. / P. A. László

The Administrative Trustees of the Chequers Estate

De László met Arthur Lee and his American wife Ruth Moore at a garden party at Windsor in the summer of 1907. Having admired de László’s works at the Fine Art Society earlier that year, Arthur Lee commissioned a formal portrait of himself, completed later in 1907 [11019]. One of the Lees’ visitors’ books^[1] reveals that the following year, the artist spent at least two weeks in July and August with the Lees in Scotland at Glendoe Lodge. There he painted a three-quarter length portrait of Ruth Lee [6184].

The present work must have been executed during this holiday to mark the two couples’ blossoming friendship. Two further portraits, one in oil, left unfinished [6181], and the other in charcoal on paper [6178], were also probably done during the same visit.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [11019].

An abandoned preparatory study of the sitter is verso [112261].

PROVENANCE:

Bequeathed to Chequers by Lady Lee upon her death, 1966  

LITERATURE:

•László, Lucy de, 1902-1911 diary, 31 December 1907 entry, p. 137

EXHIBITED:

•Agnew’s, London, Exhibitions of Portraits by Philip A. László, M.V.O., May-June 1911, no. 29

CC 2008