7463

DESTROYED

Anthony Joseph Drexel Paul 1922

Half-length, slightly to the left looking to the viewer, wearing a suit and tie, a flower in his lapel

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 30: A. J. Drexel Paul / Paris, May 2nd 1922

De László worked in Paris for several months each year and painted the sitter’s wife [7460] at the same time as this portrait, receiving a fee of 800 guineas for both portraits.^[1] He also painted Paul’s sister, Mary Paul Munn [8882] and her daughter, Pauline [8976] in Paris in 1929.

Anthony Joseph Drexel Paul was born in Philadelphia 10 February 1884, the son of James William Paul Jr., and his wife Frances Drexel. In 1911 he married Isabel Biddle, daughter of Dr Alexander W. Biddle and Anne Mckenna Biddle, another long-established Philadelphia family. There were three children of the marriage: James William (born 1913), A.J. Drexel Junior (born 1914) and Anne (born 1917). The family lived mainly at Box Hill, Radnor, just outside Philadelphia and would stay in an apartment in the Berkeley Hotel, Philadelphia, when in town. In the summer they took up residence in their seafront home at Ilesburgh, Maine, where they spent much of the time sailing.

The sitter was an active patron of charitable works including the Seamen’s Church Institute, Sandlot Sports Association and the Main Line Division Salvation Army. From 1932 Paul served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Drexel Institute founded by his grandfather in 1891.

The present portrait and that of his wife [7460] were destroyed by fire at Box Hill in the 1950s. The sitter died in Florida in 1958, his wife having died some five years earlier.

EXHIBITED:

•M. Knoedler & Co., Paris, 10-17 June 1922^[2]

LITERATURE:

•The Spur, 15 June 1923, p. 46, ill.

•DLA092-0095, “Portrait Painters Hold Reception,” The New York Herald, Paris, Wednesday, 7 June 1922

•DLA092-0081, “Art Notes by Mahlstick” Paris Evening Telegram, 10 June 1922

•László, Philip de, 1931 diary, private collection, 28 November entry, p. 336

KF 2017