8004

Don Alfonso de Borbón y Battenberg, Prince of Asturias; eldest son of Alfonso XIII of Spain 1927

Standing half-length slightly to the left, wearing a blue cape over his naval uniform, his right thumb tucked behind the second button of his jacket, the Red Cross of the Military Order of Santiago embroidered below the insignia of the Prince of Asturias beside his left lapel

Oil on canvas, 85 x 59 cm (33 ½ x 23 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1927   

Inscribed top right: S.A. EL PRINCIPE DE ASTURIAS   

Sitters’ Book II, f. 53: Alfonso P. / March 1927.

Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid

This is the more formal of two portraits of the Prince of Asturias painted during de László's second visit to Spain in 1927, when he was commissioned to paint King Alfonso [7925], Queen Victoria Eugenia [7933] and their six children. Two show him in hunting costume [8003], one of which was later destroyed [112235].

On Sunday, 20 March 1927, Lucy de László wrote from Madrid to her son Paul: “Dads wants to write to you, but he is awfully busy. He goes mng + aft, to the Palace + has commands to paint all the 6 children – He has begun the 3 eldest, and likes the 2 boys^[1] so much, the older ones. He is treated like an old friend at the Palacio Real. I expect to be invited there next week.”^[2] But Lucy soon appreciated the concern at Court for the Prince of Asturias’s health. On 20 April she noted in her diary: “P. was working today at the picture of the Prince of Asturias – He is in naval uniform, & looks full face out of the Canvas – a nice face, v- fair. Oh! The tragedy of this household. We heard the Prince talking excitedly in the room ajoining (his bed room) & presently P. sent there to ask the Queen Mother [7922] to come & see the portrait.”^[3] Two days later, Lucy wrote: “P & I walked in the Gardens near by, & he told me the following that had occurred in the Studio...The Queen came in at end of sitting. The Prince of Asturias got up to show how well he cd walk^[4] – ‘Mummie, what shall I wear’? he asked referring to something connected with meeting The Prince of Wales – Then he asked if he might be at the banquet in the Prince’s honour tonight; she refused, saying ‘you know there will be some of the Grandees present, I don’t think you had better come,’ – The boy had rolled after her in his chair to ask her this – It’s all so dreadfully sad about these children! The Queen kissed him & said ‘I must go.’”^[5] 

Don Alfonso was the eldest son of Alfonso XIII of Spain [7925] and Princess Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg [7933]. He was born in Madrid on 10 May 1907. As heir apparent, he bore the title Prince of Asturias.

Alfonso was a delicate infant and, about four months after de László’s first visit  to Madrid in 1910, the Infante don Ferdinand of Bavaria, a doctor and close relative of the King, had to impart the news to the royal Family that the Prince was haemophiliac. Young Alfonso’s condition was far more serious than that of his youngest brother, Gonzalo [8014], born in 1914, though both children would wear special clothes to protect them from life-endangering haematomas. The disease was transmitted through his mother who had inherited the so-called ‘Mal de Hesse’ from her grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Alfonso grew tall and willowy, with the blue eyes and fair hair of his English mother. However, his life was severely restricted as the slightest knock could cause haemorrhaging, pain and inflammation. Most of his early years were spent quietly at the small palace of La Quinta, near El Pardo, looking after the farm animals there, in the company of his faithful dog “Peluzón.”

In 1931 his family left the royal palace to go into exile. In his description of this departure, one can sense the young Alfonso’s deep frustration with his infirmity, perhaps even more so since he was the eldest son and heir. Unable to walk at that time, he had to be carried out to the car: “I was more of a useless burden than a human being.”^[6]

Because of Alfonso’s inability to lead an active public life, his father had contemplated persuading his son to renounce any possibility of succession to the then defunct Spanish throne. In the event, the young prince signed a statement to this effect in Lausanne on 11 June 1933, shortly before his marriage to the Cuban sugar cane heiress, Edelmira Sampedro-Ocejo y Robato, whom he had met while receiving treatment for his condition at a sanatorium near Lausanne. King Alfonso would not accept the marriage because he disapproved of his son marrying a commoner. Consequently, only Queen Victoria Eugenia and his sisters, the Infantas doña Beatriz [8008] and doña María Cristina [10854] were present at the wedding at Ouchy in Switzerland in June 1933. The Queen was so hurt by the attitude and absence of the King, that she would not attend the weddings of the Infantes doña Beatriz, don Jaime [10852] and don Juan [12015], which took place in Rome in January, March and October of 1935.

On marrying a commoner, don Alfonso was automatically obliged, according to the old law of succession, the Pragmatic Sanction of Carlos III, to renounce his right to the throne and drop the heir-apparent title of Prince of Asturias. He and his wife henceforth used the courtesy title of the Count and Countess of Covadonga. On his divorce in 1937, he married another commoner, Marta Rocafort y Altuzarra, a beautiful model, the daughter of a dentist, whom he had met in New York. Don Alfonso died of his haemophiliac condition on 6 September 1938, at the age of thirty-one, after suffering a fatal head injury in a car accident in Miami, Florida. All his family were in Europe. Queen Victoria Eugenia sailed from Southampton on the Queen Mary,  but she arrived too late to see him alive. Don Alfonso was initially buried in Miami, but in 1985 his body was entombed in the Pantheon of the Infantes at the Escorial in the same ceremony as that for his mother and his brothers, don Jaime and don Gonzalo. 

PROVENANCE:

Previously property of King Alfonso XIII, inv. no. 1308, hanging in the Royal Palace in the office of the King

EXHIBITED:

•Museo de Arte Moderno,  Madrid, 12-16 May 1927^[7]
•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1927, no. 24 

•Príncipes de Asturias, Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Oviedo, 1988, no. 17, pp. 68-9

LITERATURE:

•The New York Times, 31 July 1927, ill.

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of Painter, London, 1939, p. 369

•Alcón, María Teresa Ruiz. Habitaciones y Objetos Personales del Rey Don Alfonso XIII, in Reales Sitios, no. 63, 1980, ill. 5 p. 25

•Balansó, Juan, Trío de Príncipes. Ed. Plaza & Janés, S.A., Barcelona, 1985, ill.  between pp. 128 & 129

•Balansó, Juan, Los Diamantes de la Corona, Plaza & Janés, Barcelona 1998, ill. p. 195

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 207

•García-Frías Checa, Carmen, ed., El Retrato en Las Colecciones Reales de Patrimonio Nacional de Juan de Flandes a Antonio López, 2015, ill. p. 470

•DLA123-0018 Postcard from Lucy de László to her son, Paul, 20 March 1927, private collection

•DLA162-0437, Pesti Hírlap, 26 June 1927, p. 5

•László, Lucy de, 1927 diary, private collection, p. 130

•László, Lucy de, 1927 diary, private collection, p. 132

With our grateful thanks to Excmo. Sr. Don Javier González de Vega y San Román for his assistance in preparing the biography for this entry.

SMdeL 2011