6199

Faith Moore 1907

Seated half-length slightly to the left, wearing a high-necked cream blouse and a necklace with a pendant, her left forearm resting on the arm of her chair, her hands loosely clasped and her hair pinned up in a roll

Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 62.3 cm (29 x 24 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P.A. László / 1907. X.

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 79: Faith Moore, Winter Harbor, Maine [with dittoes under the date above, inscribed by Ruth Lee, October 25th 1907]

Sitters’ Book I, f. 80: Faith Moore  "       "      " [signed below signature dated August 3rd 1908]

In the collection of Bradbury Dyer III, U.S.A.

De László met Arthur Lee, his wife Ruth, and possibly Faith Moore herself in June 1907 at Windsor. Faith was Ruth’s only sibling, to whom she was very close. The Lees were familiar with de László’s work, having admired his exhibition at Agnew’s earlier that year, and they were so favourably impressed that Arthur Lee soon commissioned his portrait from the artist [11019]. It was painted in October 1907, when the present work was also executed. It may have been commissioned in the summer of 1907, like Arthur Lee’s, but its conception may have arisen spontaneously during the sittings for his formal portrait. The brushwork for the sitter’s body and hair is very free, as are the sweeping brushstrokes in earth colours in the background, which gives the picture the immediacy typical of de László’s study portraits.

This is the first of the four portraits de László painted of Faith Moore, including an unfinished painting of her with her three adopted sons [3629]. In the same month as he painted the present work, de László also made a smaller study portrait of her, on board [6201], which he dedicated to Ruth Lee [6184], and the following year he painted a portrait of their aunt, Ella L. Moore, in New York [6197].

Faith Moore was born c.1879, the younger daughter of a prominent New York financier and railway magnate, John Godfrey Moore (1847-1899) and his wife Jane Aldrich (died 1892).^[1] Throughout her life she suffered from a fragile constitution. In 1898, the Moores were living at 10 East Forty-Ninth Street, New York, and when Mr Moore died, in 1899, their address was given as 11 East Sixty-Fifth Street. They also owned a home, Far-from-the-Wolf, in Winter Harbor, Maine,^[2] where they holidayed every summer with their daughters.

Faith and Ruth were well-known in New York society and served as bridesmaids at the wedding of their friend Bertha Terrell to Wilfred Buckley.^[3] They were both portrayed as angels on the frescoed walls of the apse of All Saints’ Church in Madison Avenue, alongside the daughters of its other benefactors.^[4]

Faith Moore’s inheritance from her father made her one of the richest women in the United States. She made national news when, in 1904, “seeking an apartment in which she might live in unostentatious style,” she “selected one of fifteen rooms and five bathrooms at the hitherto unprecedented rental of $15,000 a year. The building is at 787 Fifth Avenue, the entire sixth floor of which Miss Moore and her aunt [Ella L. Moore] are to occupy.”^[5] “Miss Moore is a young woman with distinctive taste in furnishings and decorating, and her apartment has been arranged according to plans made by herself,” noted another publication the following year.^[6] She was a member of the National Society of Colonial Dames and of the Colony Club, New York.

However, it was in England that she made her permanent home. She was presented at the Court of St. James’s in April 1904. In 1913, she had “bought 17 Berkeley Square [in London] for $75,000… The house is in the hands of the decorators. She purposes to live there permanently.” The house had previously been leased from Lord Northcliffe [4764] by Mrs. Arthur Graham Glasgow [5353]. It may be assumed that it was due to the works in the house being unfinished that Faith was staying at the Berkeley Hotel, Piccadilly, in May 1913, when its safe was robbed of $24,000 worth of jewellery, much of it belonging to her.^[7] Four years later, with her sister, she acquired Chequers, the Buckinghamshire estate the Lees had leased since 1909, and gifted to Arthur Lee, who in turn bequeathed it to the nation. It is still the country home of British Prime Ministers today.

In his private papers, Lord Lee of Fareham explained the circumstances under which Faith Moore financed the acquisition of a weekly review in 1919: “She was desperately anxious to have some special and independent raison d’être, which could not only bring interest and colour into her life but also enable her to make use of her money as an influence for good or in support of patriotic causes. At the same time she was so intensely shy, and so afflicted with what is now called an ‘inferiority complex’, that – except the shelter of my wing – she could never have faced the enterprise, with its haunting possibilities of publicity.”^[8] However, Faith soon realised how expensive this venture was, and she only ran the Outlook from 1919 until July 1920. On 29 December 1920, she eventually became a British citizen^[9] and when the Lees vacated Chequers in 1921, it was at Faith’s home, Downshire House, Richmond, that they stayed.^[10] A modern and fashionable woman, she never married, but adopted three sons, John Graham, David Drummond, and Peter Lee, to whom she devoted her life. She died in Oxford in March 1944.^[11] 

PROVENANCE:        

The sitter;

By descent in the family;

Sold at Christie’s London, 8 June 2006, lot 342 

LITERATURE:

•Lee, Arthur, A Good Innings: The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham, ed. by Alan Clark, John Murray, 1974, p.186

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 109, ill. pp. 112, 143

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

MD & CC 2008