6277

Portrait drawing

William John Arthur Charles Cavendish-Bentinck, 6th Duke of Portland 1932

Head and shoulders to the right in three-quarter profile, wearing a jacket, wing collar and bow tie

Charcoal on paper, 83.9 x 55.9 cm (33 x 22 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1932   

Laib L18792 (492) / C22 (14)  

NPG 1932 Album, p. 6

Sitters’ Book II, f. 73: Portland “ “ 16 [page dated in the artist’s hand: 1932. July]

Private Collection

The Duke of Portland was de László’s most important patron in England, as well as one of his closest friends. Their association started in 1911, when the Duke commissioned a portrait of his daughter Victoria [6827], although in his memoirs, the Duke recalls that “de László began by painting two pictures of [him].”^[1] Unhappy with his first attempt [4443], de László made a second portrait of the Duke [4442] at the time, but gave him both canvases.

The sitter’s favourite portrait of himself is the present drawing, which he chose as a frontispiece for his memoirs: “Later on he [de László] gave to my wife a charcoal sketch, which we all much like and consider the best portrait of me that has ever been drawn.”^[2] Lucy also noted seeing it in her diary, after a visit to Welbeck Abbey: “The wonderful drawing of him by Philip sits on a sofa in the Gothic hall.  I asked him after lunch today to let me have a photo of this drawing for myself, & I asked the Duchess for one of her last picture [12919?] by P. also, & she sd she wd give me one.”^[3]

A photograph of this portrait, signed by the sitter and which remains in the possession of a descendant of the artist.  

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4442].

EXHIBITED:          

•Wildenstein & Co., Ltd., London, Exhibition of Paintings by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., In Aid of the London Hospital and The Artists’ General Benevolent Institution, November-December, 1937, nº 62.  

LITERATURE:        

•Portland, William Arthur Cavendish-Bentinck (6th Duke), Men, Women and Things, Memories of the Duke of Portland, K.G., G.C.V.O., London, 1937, p. 221 and ill. as frontispiece

•The Illustrated London News, ‘De Laszlo Portraits – On Exhibition in London’, 27 November 1937, p. 951, ill.

•Rutter, Owen. Portrait of a Painter, 1939, pp. 275-6, 323, 378

•Barstow, Phyllida, The English Country House Party, Equation, 1989, ill. p.19

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 61, fig. 48

•The Illustrated London News, vol. 191, n˚ 5145, 27 November 1937, p. 951, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, ill. 125

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 161

•László, Lucy de, 1934 diary, private collection, 7 August entry, p. 221

CC 2008