7104

Still Life

Red Roses in a Two-handled Silver Tankard 1918

Still life of red roses in a two-handled silver tankard with decorated rim and feet, against a pale brown background

Watercolour on paper, 36 x 26 cm (14 ¼ x 10 ¼ in.)

Indistinctly inscribed lower right: my heartiest Easter Greetings  / to ... / 1918 – from P.A. de László [in ink]

Private Collection

De László, having been arrested in September 1917 on unproven suspicion of his being an enemy alien, was sent to Islington Internment Camp in Upper Holloway, where he remained until May 1919. See [5231] for a fuller description of this period.

During the artist’s restricted circumstances, the same items can be seen in several of the six compositions from this period. There exists another watercolour still life of the same tankard [7107], painted a few weeks later but with red geraniums, white primula flowers and cyclamen leaves, which remains in the collection of one of the descendants of the artist.

The bunch of roses in the present work was given to de László by his niece by marriage, Alfhild,^[1] the wife of Sam Guinness, his wife Lucy’s nephew, ^[2] when she visited him in the camp. She apparently burst into tears as she was so distressed to see his suffering. According to Alfhild’s daughter, he painted this watercolour for her and presented it on her next visit.^[3] 

For further still life compositions painted in the Islington Institution, see [13308], [13704] and [5229] for another painted at Littleworth Corner, whilst the artist was under house arrest before his release in June 1919.

PROVENANCE:

Alfhild Guinness;

By descent in the family

SMdeL & SdeL 2013