111090

UNTRACED

Study portrait

Helen Heathcoat-Amory 1932

Head and shoulders to the left, head turned and looking to the right

Oil on board [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: As a memento / of the 12th July 1932 / de László   

Laib L18163 (238) / C8 (5):  Mrs. Emery [sic]

NPG Album 1932, p. 39a

This portrait was painted as a wedding gift for the sitter’s husband William Bathurst. The family were important patrons of de László and he painted ten portraits of them between 1919 and 1936: 7th Earl Bathurst [3541], his wife [3544], their daughter Meriel [4535][4536][4539], his son Lord Apsley [2023] and daughter-in-law [3534][3537] and a double portrait of their sons [3539]. According to a letter from the sitter to the artist, arrangements were made on her behalf by Countess Bathurst and she attended de László’s studio 5 July.^[1] He inscribed the portrait with ‘As a memento’ and the date of the wedding.    

William Bathurst wrote a letter of thanks to the artist: “The photographs of the picture have just arrived and I feel I must take this opportunity of thanking you for this almost unbelievably wonderful gift which you are making me. If only I had words to express one half of what I feel on this occasion! I cannot tell you how much impressed I have been when I have realised how much you were doing for me; all that valuable time of yours which you have so freely given, even to the extent of putting off a pleasant and I am sure much needed holiday, for this picture’s sake. The Wedding Present which you have given is, I can see from the photographs only, a thing of real beauty. To me it will always be my most treasured possession and a joy for ever. I can only hope that you felt a little of the pleasure in painting it which I shall derive from looking upon it for the rest of my life. There is one thing more I should like to say. I cannot help feeling how much the generosity of your act in giving me this lovely thing arises not so much from affection to me individually as to my parents. The picture which you have painted will be if possible even more valuable to me when I think of the intense pleasure which you intended to give and have indeed given to my father and mother. so that the gratitude which I owe you as a Bridegroom is only equaled by that which I feel as a son.”^[2] 

Helen Winifred Heathcoat-Amory was born 21 September 1903, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Harry William Ludovic Heathcoat-Amory of Hele Manor, Dulverton, Somerset, and his wife Evelyn Mary Stanley. Her father had retired from the Coldstream Guards before her birth and she spent her early years at Quantock Lodge, Over Stowey, Somerset. On 12 July 1932 she married the Honourable William Ralph Seymour Bathurst (1907-1970), second son of Seymour Henry Bathurst, 7th Earl Bathurst and his wife the Honourable Lilias Borthwick. There were no children of the marriage.

She died 29 September 1972 at Cold Ashton Manor, Gloucestershire, aged sixty-seven.

LITERATURE:

•DLA153-0023, letter from Helen Heathcoat-Amory to de László, 3 July 1932  

•DLA058-0081, letter from William Ralph Seymour Bathurst to de László, 9 July 1932

KF 2020