4636

The Honourable John William Davis, American Ambassador to the Court of St James’s 1920

Seated half-length slightly to the left and looking full face to the viewer, wearing a dark suit and waistcoat, wing collar and dark tie with a pearl and diamond tie pin, on his knee a large open book which he holds with his left hand, his right hand holds a pince-nez, a green curtain behind to the left

Oil on canvas, 95.3 x 69.9 cm (37 ½ x 27 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1920

Laib L9707(140) / C6(27): Mr. Davis - the American Ambassador

NPG Album 1917-21, p. 107

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 16: John W. Davis July 26. 1920

The Embassy of the United States of America, London

This is the second in a series of portraits of American Ambassadors to the Court of St. James’s that de László painted over a period of some eleven years: Walter Hines Page [6498] in 1917, Frank Billings Kellogg in 1925 [5917] and Alanson B. Houghton in 1928 [5800]. Copies of all three of those portraits, with the present portrait, remain in the collection of the American Embassy in London. It was customary for ambassadors to present the embassy with  a portrait of themselves to commemorate their period of service.

The sitter recorded in his diary that, with his wife and Mrs. Henry P. Fletcher (whose husband was also painted by de László in 1920 [5116]), he visited de László’s studio on 9 April 1920, to see the artist’s portrait of Lord Hardinge as Viceroy of India [111008]. The sitter’s wife was “eager” for him to sit to de László (“at 400 gb”); Ambassador Davis noted in his diary, “If it must be done, I prefer him to any other whom I know.” On Saturday, 10 July 1920, the artist called on Davis “at six o’clock to make arrangements for my first sitting with him on Monday. He decides to paint me in a conventional black frock coat.” The first sitting took place on Monday, 12 July, and during the second sitting the next day from 10:30 to 2:30, de László “wiped out all the work of the day before and began again with a new position.” After the second sitting, the Ambassador noted, he was to return for final sittings on 20 and 21 July, and he did, for two and two-and-a-half hours, respectively. They were not to be the final sittings, however, as the sitter recorded further sittings from 2:45 to 5:30 on 26 July, and again the next day from 10:30 to 12:45. During the latter sitting the artist amused the Ambassador with a story of “confiding to Pope Leo XIII when painting him, that he was about to marry an Irish girl, and then trembling for fear further inquiry would evoke the fact that she was a protestant, a unionist and a Guinness.” The portrait was finished in a final sitting on 28 July, from 10:15 to 12:45.^[1]

The artist was said to have been so struck by the beauty of the Ambassador’s wife that he insisted on painting her as well. The sitter’s biographer suggests that the artist was “not wholly satisfied with the blandness of the official portrait of the Ambassador,”^[2] and de László painted Davis again in 1923 [4638]. That picture and a rejected version [4640] remain in private collections.

John William Davis was born on 13 April 1873, in Clarksburg, West Virginia, the son of John James Davis (1835-1916) and his wife Anna Kennedy (1841-1917).  He graduated with a law degree from Washington and Lee University School of Law in 1895 and joined his father’s firm in Clarksburg. In 1896 he returned to Washington and Lee Law School as an assistant professor for one year, before returning to private practice.

Davis was a highly regarded lawyer and in 1911 was elected to represent West Virginia in the US House of Representatives. In 1913 President Woodrow Wilson appointed him Solicitor General and Davis welcomed the chance to return to the courtroom. In 1918 Wilson appointed him Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, England, where he guided Anglo-American relations through a difficult period after the First World War.  He returned to the United States to resume his private law practice in New York in 1921 and established himself as one of the nation’s leading corporate lawyers. In 1924 Davis was the Democratic party’s compromise choice for presidential election after a deadlocked Democratic National Convention. The election was a landslide victory for the Republican incumbent, Calvin Coolidge [4169]. Davis remained active in politics, serving as a New York delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1928 and 1932.

The sitter was a member of the National Advisory Council of the Crusaders, an organization promoting the repeal of Prohibition. He was the founding President of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921, and served as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1922 to 1939 and as president of the New York City Bar Association from 1931 to 1933. He continued to practice law until his death, by which time he had argued 140 cases before the United States Supreme Court. 

The sitter married twice: on 20 June 1899 to Julia Terrill McDonald, who gave birth to their daughter Julia 23 July the next year and died soon after on 10 August 1900. On 2 January 1912 he married Ellen Bassel.

John Davis died in Charleston, South Carolina, on 24 March 1955, surviving his second wife by twelve years.

EXHIBITED:

•The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, Paintings by Philip A. de László, 26 February-20 March 1921, no. 39 

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Paintings by Philip A. de László, 4-16 April 1921, no. 24

LITERATURE:

•“Studio Talk,” The Studio Magazine, Vol. LXXX (80), 1920, pp. 100-104, ill. p. 100.

•Harbaugh, William H., Lawyer’s Lawyer: The Life of John W. Davis, New York, Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 146

•Voss, Frederick S., Portraits of the American Law, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution and University of Washington Press, 1989, p. 140-3

•Davis, Julia, and Fleming, Dolores A., eds., The Ambassadorial Diary of John W. Davis: The Court of St. James’s, 1918-1921, West Virginia University Press, 1993, p. 265, 274n1, 311, 312, 316, 318, 319

•Saussure, Jr., Charlton de, The Cottages and Architects of Yeamans Hall, Yeamans Hall Club, Charleston, 2010, ill. p. 85

•DLA016-0063, Letter from de László to Herr Dr Sigmund Munz, 3 February 1925

•DLA096-0014 and 096-0020, The Sketch, 11 February 1925

MD 2018