111729

The Honorable Ida Merry of Belladrum 1910

Standing three-quarter-length, slightly to the left, her head turned and looking away to the right, wearing a white off-the-shoulder evening dress with a blue stole draped over her right arm, a pearl brooch at her breast and a silver bangle on her left wrist, an arrangement of flowers on a table to the left

Oil on canvas, 177.8 x 106.7 cm (70 x 42 in.)

Indistinctly inscribed top left: P.A. László / 1910 V

Laib L4785 (785 / C 29 (30)

NPG Album 1913-15, p. 77

Private Collection

This portrait is mentioned a number of times in Lucy de László’s diary for 1910. Extremely unusually, de László needed fourteen sittings of one to three hours between 3 May and 9 June. This exceptionally large number reveals the great care he took with what seems to have been a challenging and compositionally complex commission. Sittings began the week of 10 May and continued into the second week of June. Payment of £630 was received from the sitter in October that year.^[1] 

Ida Merry recorded the arrangements for the portrait in her diary 8 March 1910: “After Easter we are going up to Hill Street^[2] for about a month – I am to sit to Laszlo for my picture. I want so much to have Eion painted by him also.” The portrait of her son is not recorded and was almost certainly not achieved. De László did, however, paint the sitter’s nephew Angus Vickers [5237] in 1926. Ida Merry did not record her thoughts on the completed picture in her diary though it was, according to family recollection, hung in pride of place at Belladrum House, the Merrys’ home in Inverness-shire.  

Ida Helen Lizzie Chetwynd was born 24 February 1860 in Dalmeny, County of Linlithgow, the eldest child of Captain Henry Weyland Chetwynd (1829-1893) and Julia Bosville Davidson (1828- 1901). Though aristocratic by descent the Chetwynds were not wealthy and through family connections Ida became a lady’s companion for Anne Merry of Belladrum.^[3] Ida knew the Highlands well, as her mother was the daughter of Duncan Davidson of Tulloch, chief of the Clan Davidson, who lived at Tulloch Castle, at nearby Dingwall.

During her time at Belladrum she met Archibald William Merry (1851-1933), son of her employer. They formed an attachment and were married 14 November 1899, at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, London. Each was entering a first marriage at the age of thirty-nine and forty-nine respectively. Merry’s father was James Merry, a Glasgow ironmaster, MP for the Boroughs of Falkirk, and noted owner on the turf. He left the estate of Belladrum and a large fortune to Merry on his death in 1877.

Ida suffered several miscarriages before her only child Eion was born on 3 January 1904. It is possible that her experiences led her to open the Ida Merry Maternity Home in Inverness, the first of its kind in the Highlands. The Merrys rented Dupplin Castle in Perthshire and Altyre in Morayshire until Anne Merry died in 1911, when they moved to Belladrum.

Ida is described as being very clever and fluent in four languages. She was dedicated to a number of good causes throughout her life and in particular to the Red Cross. During the 1919 Spanish Flu Epidemic, her son Eion was in the infirmary at Eton, and remembered her entering the room dressed in full Red Cross uniform, rolling up her sleeves to take charge of the outbreak at the school.  She was also described by a grand-daughter as: “lofty but kind, and wonderful with children who adored her.”

The sitter died at Belladrum 3 January 1950.

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the family

LITERATURE:
•László, Lucy de, 1910 diary, 4 May entry, pp. 36, 38, 39, 43, 48, 124

KF 2013