2234

Mrs Wilfrid Ashley, née Muriel Spencer 1920

Half-length in profile to the right, three-quarter face, wearing a coloured bandeau in her hair with an orange tassel falling onto her right shoulder, and holding a rose-coloured shawl in her hands which are held to her breast, a coral necklace draped around her right arm

Oil on canvas, 73.8 x 63.5 cm (31 x 25 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1920   

Laib L9586(930) / C1(35)  

NPG Album 1917-21, p. 114

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 13: Muriel / Ashley. / Feb. 25th. 1920

Private Collection

In 1900 de László had painted Maud Cassel [4030], Colonel Wilfrid Ashley’s first wife. In a letter of 4 December 1919, Ashley wrote to the artist to enquire as to his availability to paint his second wife. De László had only recently returned to work after his war-time internment and subsequent exoneration in June 1919. Ashley specified a head and shoulders portrait measuring 30 x 24 inches which would be equal in size to an existing picture at Broadlands. “We have a charming picture here of a lady by Romney and that is the size of that [the present picture] picture and seems a very convenient canvas to use.”^[1]

Ashley thought highly of the finished portrait, “It will long be a cherished heirloom I trust, and it shows clearly that there is at least one artist of the twentieth century whose works can challenge the best productions of former times. The portraits by Van Dyck, Romney, Opie, Raeburn, Reynolds, Lely, Hoppner and Laurence [sic] in this house will welcome so distinguished an addition to their company.”^[2]

De László charged 350 guineas for the present picture and also painted a study portrait [2601] of the sitter in the same pose and dress during the same sittings. The study was inscribed, “To my charming sitter” and presented to her as a gift. The first sitting took place on 24 February, with three others recorded in the artist’s appointment book on 25 and 27, and 9 March.

The sitter’s flamboyant dress reflects her artistic temperament and interest in haute couture, which encompassed all aspects of her life. Early in her marriage she posed, as Ghirlandaio’s Giovanna Tornabuoni and Cavallino’s St Catherine, for the Prince of Wales Theatre in aid of the General Lying-In Hospital.

Muriel Emily Spencer was born in 1881, eldest child of Reverend Walter Spencer of Fownhope Court, Hereford and Annie Elizabeth Hudson, daughter of Robert Hudson of Hudson’s soap. Muriel, always known as Molly, married Arthur Lionel Ochonar Forbes-Sempill (1877-1962) on 25 November 1903, in Sydney, Australia, where he was posted at the time. He had a successful naval career and they moved repeatedly to follow his postings in Sydney, Portsmouth, and Malta. On 10 July 1914 it was reported in the Times that she had been granted a divorce in the Scottish courts on the grounds of her husband’s adultery. She married Lieutenant Colonel Wilfrid William Ashley (1867-1939), 29 August 1914, as his second wife.

Ashley had inherited Broadlands, at Romsey in Hampshire, from his great-grandmother Emily, Lady Palmerston (1787-1869) and the couple used this as their principal home. Though the sitter had no children of her own, Ashley had two daughters from his first marriage to Maude Cassel (1878-1911). The elder, Edwina Cynthia Annette, married Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1922, and de László painted their wedding portraits [3178] &[3510]. The younger, Ruth Mary Clarisse, married her father’s parliamentary private secretary, Alec Stratford Cunningham-Reid in 1927. The relationship between step-mother and daughters was often strained, and not helped by Molly’s insistence that they called her ‘Madre.’ Ashley was made 1st Baron Mount Temple in 1932 and the sitter was then styled Lady Mount Temple.

She loved Broadlands and restored and redecorated it with great style and care.  She also developed the gardens and grounds, being a keen gardener herself, and loved fishing in the River Test nearby: “I would rather kill a salmon than be given twenty new hats.”^[3] She was extremely busy in her years there, acting as patron for many charities while advising a London-based interior design company, as well as being employed as director of Home Arts and British Customs at Elstree Studios from 1928. She was content to have too much to do than too little, commenting that, “Quite half the art of living is to realize what is worth while and to look upon one’s existence as a delightfully adventurous gamble.”^[4]

After the death of her husband, the sitter’s daughter-in-law Edwina inherited Broadlands, and Lady Mount Temple moved to Somerset. It was here that she spent the Second World War. Her niece recalled that even during the austerity years, she still managed to make her house look very fine, using parachute silk for curtains when there was no other material available. She loved a challenge: to buy a house and redecorate it and then to move on, something she did regularly, later moving to Alton in Hampshire and then to a Victorian house at Penshurst in Kent. She died there in 1954.

LITERATURE:         

•The Sketch, 27 July 1921, p. 127, ill.

•Woman’s Journal, vol. III, no. 16, February 1929, front cover, ill.              

•“The Life I lead,” by Mrs. Wilfrid Ashley, published in a contemporary magazine (between 1928-31), pp.  6-7,142-143

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 390

•Field, Katherine, Philip Alexius de László; 150th Anniversary Exhibition, de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 21

•Field, Katherine ed., Gábor Bellák and Beáta Somfalvi, Philip de László (1869-1937); "I am an Artist of the World", Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2019, p. 40

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 5

•DLA050-0041, letter from Colonel Wilfrid Ashley to de László, 4 December 1919

KF 2012