110512

Norman Louis Cappel 1933

Half-length, slightly to the right, head turned to viewer, wearing a dark jacket with a white shirt, a blue, red and white striped tie and a pocket-handkerchief in his breast pocket

Oil on canvas, 82.6 x 60.3 cm (32 ½ x 23 ¾ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1933

Laib L18175 (759) C4 (13): Mr L. Cappel

NPG Album

Sitters’ Book, II, opp. f. 76: N.L. Cappel Sep. 16th. 1933

New Place Hotel, Southampton

Cappel signed the artist’s Sitters’ Book on 16 September, on the same page as Princess Elizabeth of York, later Queen Elizabeth II [10531].

Norman Louis Cappel was born in Liverpool in 1887, the eldest son of Louis Cappel and his wife Anna Springmann. He attended Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey. During the First World War he served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves on HMS Roxburg and his service record described him as a “hard working and competent officer.”

On 12 June 1916 he married Jessie Martin Ritchtie, daughter of Alexander Ritchie, J.P. at St George’s Hanover Square in London. There were two children: Louis (born 1920) and Norma (born 1922). In 1933 he married secondly, Barbara Gladys Morrison.

He died on 25 November 1974 in Poole, Dorset and is buried with his parents in Allerton Cemetery, Liverpool.

PROVENANCE:

Private Collection;

Christie’s South Kensington, 3 December 2015, lot 23

KF 2023