6021

Mrs William Bateman Leeds, née May Stewart 1915 

Half-length to the left wearing evening dress and a stole of white tulle, a long rope of large pearls round her neck, her left hand raised through the necklace and held lightly to her cheek

Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 95.3 cm (35 x 37 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P.A. de László / 1915 XII   

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 102: Nancy Leeds Dec. 15th 1915

Private Collection

Colonel Repington [6801], a mutual friend of de László and the sitter, saw this portrait 20 December 1915 and thought it: “a great success. A fine piece of work and a most companionable picture.”^[1] This contrasted with his opinion of her portrait by Boldini, which he saw in August 1916: “She showed me the Boldini portrait she sat for a month in Paris and paid £2000. Boldini always makes his ladies six feet high and like successful cocottes. She likes the portrait very much. I was not struck by it, and there is no resemblance to her at all. Laszlo’s portrait is out and away the best!”^[2] 

De László later made a full length portrait of the sitter in 1922 [7809], after her marriage to Prince Christopher of Greece [7802]. She was a favourite of artists and Paul Helleu was quoted as saying that she possessed “ninety eight of the one hundred essential points of beauty.” John Singer Sargent made a charcoal sketch of her in 1914.^[3]

May Stewart was born on 20 January 1878, daughter of William C. Stewart (died 1912) and Mary Holden of Cleveland, Ohio. She was just sixteen when she married her first husband, George Ely Worthington of Cleveland, Ohio. 16 October 1894. The marriage certificate shows that she had added Nonie to her name by this time. She would eventually become known as Nancy May. She and Worthington were divorced in 1899, and she married the millionaire industrialist William Bateman Leeds, tin plate magnate and head of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad. They had one son, William Bateman Leeds, Jr. (born 1902).  

W. B. Leeds died at the Ritz Hotel, Paris 23 June 1908, leaving his widow a fortune estimated at thirty-five million dollars. Mrs Leeds returned to the United States and their Newport home, Rough Point, but spent much of the year in London from 1910, when her son was enrolled at Eton.^[4] She rented the Grosvenor Street home of King Edward’s [7705] former mistress, Mrs Keppel.^[5] 

She was engaged to Prince Christopher of Greece, youngest brother of King Constantine in 1914, but the outbreak of war kept them apart for six years. Negotiations as to marriage settlement and her conversion to the Eastern Othordox Church also delayed the event. During the First World War she rented Kenwood House, Hampstead, the estate of the Earl of Mansfield, formerly occupied by Grand Duke Michael of Russia. She and Prince Christopher of Greece were finally married 1 February 1920 at the Russian Church in Vevey, Switzerland and she was baptized into the church, taking the name of Anastasia. The couple settled in London, where they rented Spencer House, ancestral home of the Earls Spencer.^[6] 

The sitter grew dangerously ill in early March 1921 with cancer, though her husband kept the diagnosis from her. Her son came to be with her in her time of illness and renewed his childhood acquaintance with Prince Christopher’s niece, Princess Xenia of Russia. The two became engaged and, on 9 October 1921, Prince and Princess Christopher were in Paris for the wedding. Princess Anastasia died at Spencer House on 29 August 1923 and her remains were returned to the United States and she was buried with her parents in the family mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery, New York City.

Prince Christopher later recalled in his memoirs that, “she was pretty rather than beautiful. On the surface she reminded one of a Dresden china figure with her fair hair, small regular features and flawless pink and white colouring. But underneath it she had an exceptionally keen brain, a tremendous sense of humour and the kindest heart in the world.”^[7] 

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the family

LITERATURE:

•Repington, Colonel Charles a Court, The First World War 1914-1918, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1920, vol. I, pp. 92 & 294

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 302

•Tantzos, G. Nicholas, ed., The Inheritors of Alexander the Great, Atlantic International Publications, New York, 1986, p. 273, ill.

•DLA075-0114, letter from Nancy Leeds to de László, 19 July 1915

•DLA010-0013, letter from Col. Repington to de László, 17 December 1915

•DLA0480-0030, letter from Col. Repington de László, 9 August 1916

MD & KF 2017