1968

Second Lieutenant Oliver Henry Douglas Vickers 1917

Half-length slightly to the left, looking full face to the viewer, wearing an Army 1908 pattern officer’s service dress uniform, with R.F.C. flying badge

Oil on canvas, 75 x 62.3 cm (29 ½ x 24 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1917 may 31   

Laib L8549(678) / C27(33)  Lieutenant Vickers

NPG 1917-21 Album, p. 16

Sitters’ Book II, f. 11: OHD Vickers. [among signatures dated August 1917]

Eton College Collections

This portrait was commissioned by the sitter's father to commemorate his son’s appointment to Temporary Second Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps, March 1917. Less than four months later the artist would be arrested and interned under the terms of the Defence of the Realm Act (1914). De László also painted the sitter's two younger brothers, Angus in 1926 [5237] in celebration of his 21st birthday, and Sholto in 1923 [7555]. He painted Vicker’s cousin Antony in 1928 [7551], and Antony’s son Alexander as a boy in 1935 [10281].

Oliver Henry Douglas Vickers was born 13 September 1898 in Mayfair, London, the son of Douglas Vickers (1861-1937) and the Hon. Katherine Adelaide Chetwynd (1861-1944). He was educated at Eton College, leaving in 1915 to learn to fly civil aircraft. He achieved his aviator’s certificate from the Royal Aero Club 3 August 1916,^[1] having passed his test flying an L&P biplane. This was the Royal Flying Corps minimum requirement for military pilot training and he was accepted into their service 6 October 1916, receiving his ‘wings’ 5 March 1917.

Vickers flew primarily in support of the Battle of Ypres and recorded thirteen victories between 29 June and 17 August 1917, sufficient to be regarded as a World War I flying ace. He was posted to a new fighter squadron No. 90, intended for further service on the Western Front but a shortage of planes led to their becoming part of the R.F.C.’s Home Defence Force against night raids by German bombers. He was promoted to Lieutenant in April 1918, then to Acting Captain in August the same year, before being demobilised in January 1919.

Vickers’ family owned the engineering conglomerate Vickers Ltd, established by his great-grandfather as a steel foundry in 1828. By the start of the war they had expanded into the production of munitions, artillery, shipbuilding, and aircraft, and had built the Royal Navy’s first submarine, HMS Holland I, in 1901. The sitter joined the Civil Aviation Department of Vickers Ltd, as a Director after the war and contributed to the first successful, non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919.^[2] 

He married Barbara Kathleen (Nita) Wallace (1901-1988) 29 April 1920, at St. George’s, Hanover Square, but divorced in 1926 and died without issue at Kiama Nursing Home, Weybridge, Surrey, 17 June 1928.

Original frame by Emile Remy, 153 King’s Road, London, S.W.

PROVENANCE:  

Douglas Vickers, father of the sitter;

Angus Vickers, brother of the sitter;

Tom Vickers, first cousin of the sitter;

Presented to Eton College Collections, 1992

EXHIBITION:

•Eton College, Eton and the First World War, September-December 1992

LITERATURE:

•Tom Vickers, Etonians in the First World War: Oliver Vickers, R.F.C. / R.A.F. 1916-1919, self-published, 1992

KF 2012