12808

UNTRACED

Edward Lyulph Stanley, 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley and 3rd Baron Eddisbury 1904

Seated almost full-length slightly to the right, full face, wearing a dark suit and waistcoat with a gold watch chain, his right leg crossed over his left and his hands resting together in his lap, a mantelpiece behind to the right, a curtain to the left

Oil on canvas, [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed, lower left: László F.E. / 1904

Inscribed top right: EDWARD LYULPH / LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 68: Stanley of Alderley        

This commission was an important one for de László. It was his first in England following the success of his portraits of Pope Leo XIII [4509] and Cardinal Rampolla [4511] at the main international salons. As a young artist keen to paint the British sovereign, the new connections that arose from his acquaintance with Lord Stanley of Alderley appeared to the 35-year-old de László to promise a brilliant future in England. He was living in Vienna at the time.

In October 1904 he went to stay at the Stanley family house, Penrhôs, situated by the sea just outside Holyhead in Anglesey. De László thus described to a friend the circumstances of his coming to paint the present portrait: “I received the flattering commission some time ago to go to London to paint the portrait of one of England’s most distinguished men, Lord Stanley. […] However difficult it was for me to leave my dear little family, this work was so important that I left. Lord Stanley is the former chairman of the schools of London. He has retired, and his admirers will express their affection for him in December by presenting him with his portrait. Lord and Lady Stanley were asked to choose the artist – they and his circle asked me to paint his portrait – the picture will be placed in the National Gallery after his death. I had a wonderful time with Lord Stanley and his family. In an ancestral mansion, in the midst of a wild forest by the sea shore. In the mansion there were numerous pictures by old masters^[1], but to me the most pleasant [illegible] was to have won the friendship of a distinguished and noble family. I am happy to be able to tell you that I painted this portrait with affection – I had the opportunity to paint the sympathetic figure of a deeply cultured, splendid man, and I see it was successful. Through this family I made the acquaintance of Lord Londonderry and of the Marquess of Carlisle. This family have an opulent collection of pictures in London. Carlyle [sic] is one of the directors of the National Gallery.”^[2]

The acquaintance he formed with Lord Londonderry would prove very fruitful, as he and his family became very important patrons of de László’s [6147] [6142] . However, the following year, the present portrait was to be the cause of a severe blow to the artist. In 1905, encouraged by Lady Stanley, de László submitted his portrait for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, but it was turned down. Lady Stanley commented that: “I think there must be something wrong with the Hanging Committee this year. I look upon their conduct as quite unjustifiable.”^[3] Moreover, despite de László’s hopes as expressed to his friend in the letter cited above,^[4] the present portrait never went to the National Gallery. According to von Schleinitz in his monograph on de László in 1913 “the work itself, as a so called representational portrait, [was] deposited with the Board of Education in London.”^[5] To date, the portrait remains untraced, although a copy by de László’s official copyist, Sydney Percy Kendrick has been recorded in the collection of the Royal Liver Building, Liverpool [112034]. Schleinitz also provides us with another detail regarding the circumstances under which it was painted, explaining that “the artist was invited by the International Artist’s Union to carry out this commission.”^[6]

Despite de László’s disappointment, this commission marked the beginning of a twenty-five-year friendship with the Stanleys, who were styled Lord and Lady Sheffield from 1909.^[7] There exists a preparatory sketch in mixed media for the present portrait, which shows that de László had already determined the general composition at that stage [7287]. The artist subsequently made a number of preparatory oil studies for it. A letter from Lord Stanley suggests that de László offered him at least one in 1923 [2761].^[8] The artist kept two additional ones in his studio until his death [2759] [2986].

De László was to paint the sitter’s portrait again in 1919 [2065] in gratitude for his support during the time of his internment in 1917, when he acted as a character witness. He painted the sitter’s wife, Mary Katharine Bell, on four occasions [2767] [2768] [2770] [3870] as well as other members of the family including his eldest son, Arthur Lyulph Stanley, 5th Baron Stanley, in 1930 [2772] and his daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen Stanley, in 1920 [2117].  

Edward Lyulph Stanley was born on 16 May 1839, the 3rd son of Edward John Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley and Henrietta Maria, daughter of 13th Viscount Dillon of Costello-Gallen. He was educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he became great friends with his tutor, Benjamin Jowett. In 1862, he was elected a fellow of Balliol, and three years later, in 1865, he was called to the bar by the Inner Temple. In 1869, he resigned his Balliol fellowship: as an agnostic, he refused the declaration of conformity to the established Church. From then on, he was a strong supporter of secular control of education, with his mother and freethinking family behind him in this. On 6 February 1873, he married Mary Katherine, daughter of Sir (Isaac) Lowthian Bell, 1st Bt., steel manufacturer of the company Bell Bros., later Dorman Long. There were five children of the marriage: three sons; Arthur Lyulph (born 1875), who later succeeded to the title as 5th Baron Sheffield of Roscommon, Edward John (born 1878), Oliver Hugh (born 1879); and five daughters, Henrietta Margaret (born 1874), Katherine Florence Clementine (born 1881), Sylvia Laura (born 1882), Blanche Florence Daphne (born 1885) and Beatrice Venetia (born 1887).

He was a barrister at the Inner Temple from 1865 and a man of politics, serving as the Liberal MP for Oldham between 1880 and 1885. In 1872 he was appointed Assistant Commissioner to the Friendly Societies Commission. He was a member of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor in 1884 and appointed Commissioner to investigate the Royal Liver Friendly Society and the Cardiff Savings Bank. He was also deeply interested in matters pertaining to education; he assisted in improvements made to elementary education and was a member of the Departmental Committee on London Poor Law Schools in 1895. He was also Chairman of the London School Board from 1897 until 1904 as well as the author of Our National Education (published in 1899), a collection of articles expressing his views that education should be founded on popularly run elementary schools, ideas that were never applied, despite his best efforts. In 1903 he succeeded his brother and inherited estates in Cheshire and Anglesey, where he became Chairman of the education committee and fought hard against Church schools, from 1904 until 1919. From 1909, he was styled Lord Sheffield, having succeeded his kinsman Henry North.^[9] However, as the title of Sheffield was originally Irish, he could not use it when taking his seat in the House of Lords, using instead Stanley of Alderley. Lord Sheffield died on 18 March 1925 at Alderley Park, and is buried in the churchyard nearby at Nether Alderley.

EXHIBITED:                 

•Fine Art Society, London, An Exhibition of Portrait Paintings and Drawings by Philip A. László, May and June 1907, no. 11

LITERATURE:                  

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 225, 233

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien Ph A.v. László, Bielefeld and Leipzig, (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, p. 80

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 89

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 128

•Field, Katherine, Philip Alexius de László; 150th Anniversary Exhibition, de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 19

•Field, Katherine ed., Gábor Bellák and Beáta Somfalvi, Philip de László (1869-1937); "I am an Artist of the World", Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2019, p. 39

•DLA162-0116, Pesti Hírlap, 7 October 1904, p. 4

•DLA162-0462, Pesti Hírlap, 27 October 1904, p. 10

•DLA044-0044, letter by de László to an unknown friend, 1 November 1904

•DLA066-0093, undated letter (1907) from Gábor de Térey to de László

•DLA123-0083, letter from Lord Stanley to de László, 3 May 1923

CC 2008