4030

Amalia Mary Maud Cassel 1900

Seated three-quarter length to the right, wearing a white dress and flowered hat tied with chiffon scarf under her chin, her right arm draped over the back of a bentwood chair

Oil on canvas, 108 x 82.5 cm (42 ½ x 32 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: László F.E. / 1900 / IX / Rieder Furka V

Laib C1(34)  Miss Ashley [sic]

Sitters' Book I, opp. f. 34: Maudi Cassel 2 Mars 1900

Private Collection

Philip de László married Lucy Guinness in Stillorgan Church, Co. Dublin in June 1900. Their honeymoon in the Lake District was interrupted by a command from Queen Victoria to paint General Sir George White [7724], who had recently returned from the Boer War. De László had met the financier Sir Ernest Cassel and his daughter in Rome in 1900, while he was painting Pope Leo XIII [4509] and Cardinal Rampolla [4511], and Cassel extended an invitation for them to continue their holiday at his home the Villa Cassel in Rieder Furka in the Swiss Alps. During their visit the artist painted study portraits of Sir Ernest [3977] and his sister Wilhelmina [4029] in gratitude, as well as the preparatory oil sketch [4033] for the present work.

Amalia Mary Maud Cassel was born 18 December 1880, the only child of Sir Ernest Cassel and his wife Annette Maxwell. On 4 January 1901 she married Major Wilfrid Ashley, grandson of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury and son of Rt. Hon. (Anthony) Evelyn Melbourne Ashley and his first wife Sybella Farquhar. Among the wedding guests was Edward, Prince of Wales, a close friend of the groom, the future Edward VIII. The couple had two daughters, Edwina Cynthia Annette (born 1901) and Ruth Mary Clarisse (1906). They lived at Broadlands, near Romsey in Hampshire. Broadlands was later inherited by Edwina, who married Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1922.

Like her mother before her, Maud developed tuberculosis which affected her health for a number of years. She travelled with her husband to Egypt in the hope that the dry air would improve her condition. She died at Broadlands aged only thirty on 5 February 1911 and is buried in the churchyard in nearby Romsey.

The Times published the terms of her will 23 March 1911, it indicated that she had left her entire estate to her husband to the value of £74,471.^[1] Her father also gave £50,000 in her memory to the King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London.

LITERATURE:          

•Tahi, Anthony, “A Hungarian Painter: Filip E. László” in The Studio, vol. XXIV October 1901, pp. 2-22, ill. p. 8

•Vasárnapi Újság, vol. 48, issue 28, Budapest: Franklin Társulat, 14 July 1901,

pp. 448, 449

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939,  p. 209

•DLA140-0098, Vasárnapi Újság, vol. 48, issue 28, Budapest, 14 July 1901, p. 449, p. 449, ill.

•DLA 1911 parcel, Supplement to the African World, 11 February 1911, ill.

•DLA140-0115, Dr Kovács, Jenő, “László Fülöp”, Új Idők, Vol. 7, issue 9, Budapest: Singer és Wolfner, 24 February 1901, p. 182, ill.

KF 2012