4165

UNTRACED

Mrs George Rea Cook, née Margaretta Roebling White 1934

Seated three-quarter length to the right, on a round-backed upholstered arm chair, wearing a cream silk evening dress with a wide green sash and a cream chiffon wrap, both hands resting on her lap

Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 81.3 cm (40 x 32 in.)

Inscribed upper right: de László / N.Y. 1934 I

Juley negative 0058572

Sitters’ Book II, f. 76: Margaretta Roebling Cook. December 16, 1933.   

De László also painted the sitter’s father, William Townsend White [7729], on his fifth visit to the United States in late 1933. He had painted her mother [7731] on a previous visit in 1932. According to the artist’s diary, the first sitting took place 16 December, only three days after his ship had arrived in New York: “began miss Cook – quite nice...The daughter of a charming honest – landowner near Princetown – my dress which was intelligently made during one day – was successful - & was happy to find a good attitude – after my first drawing sketch- began painting & have a splendid preparation for Monday.”^[1] The preparatory drawing [4167] remained in the artist’s studio until his death and is currently untraced [4167]. The diary suggests that the artist had decided what type of dress his sitter would wear and had one specially made. This was not unusual in de László’s working method: other examples of the practice are the portraits of Baroness Stumm [6542] and Lady Londonderry [6142].    

The diary also hints at a scheme to kidnap the sitter that was ongoing at the time of her portrait being painted. She sat for a full day 18 December and her father accompanied her, bringing with him the suit and gun in which he was to be painted: “Both were ex[c]ited as he got a tratening [sic, i.e. threatening] letter – of blackmail – asking for money – otherwise they will kill his only daughter – my sitter - ! What a count[r]y & what a world in which we live.”^[2] It is not made clear who had made the threats against the family, and no attempt to take her seems to have been made. The sitter sat for another full day on 23 December and part days 6 and 8 January, with a final sitting 9 January.

Margaretta Roebling White was born 20 November 1904 in Trenton, New Jersey, the daughter of William Townsend White and his wife Augusta Henrietta Roebling. Their home was at Hill Top near Princeton, New Jersey. In 1925 she married George Rea Cook III, son of Edmund Dunham Cook (1868-1909) and Margaret Parsons (1873-1948).^[3] Mr. Cook at the time was still a Princeton student. He would later become President of the Princeton Bank and Trust Co.^[4] They had two children, Margaret Allison Cook (born 1930) and Constance Rea Cook (born 1932).^[5]

The sitter died 20 October 1979.

LITERATURE:

•Town and Country, March 1934, p. 19, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 250

•László, Philip de, 1933 diary, private collection, 14 December entry, p. 41; 16 December entry, p. 43; 18 December entry, p. 45; 23 December entry, p. 50

KF 2017