6996

Study portrait

Baroness Marga Marie Hilda Schröder 1910

Bust-length in profile to the left, three-quarter face, looking to the left, wearing a white blouse with a frilled collar and a blue ribbon in her hair

Oil on board, 73.5 x 50 cm (29 x 19 ¾ in.)

Inscribed lower right in pencil: P.A. László/ 1910 / may 1 London

Inscribed upper left in oil: MARGA

Verso inscribed in ink: an der [sic] charmanten Marga - / in Erinnerung an / Jugendzeiten von ihrem / ergebenen /

Phillip [sic] de László / 1910 mai. London. To the charming Marga in / memory of youthful days / from her devoted / Philip de László / 1910 May London. 

Private Collection

De László first came to the Schröder family house, Dell Park, near Windsor, in 1908 with a view to painting a portrait of Baroness Emma von Schröder. Although short of time to complete a formal portrait, he was nevertheless entranced by the baroness’s two young daughters and offered to make studies of them in a double portrait. The first attempt, however, displeased him and he put aside the board to make a fresh start [6984]. Two years later, while telling the baroness that the German Empress had objected to his using the back of the abandoned version for a study of her daughter, Princess Victoria Luise,^[1] de László showed her once again the unfinished portrait of her daughters. “Marga is excellent,” she declared, “Why don’t you paint out Dorothée’s features and let us have this as a single picture of Marga?”^[2] Given the nature of de László’s studies on board, with their thin glazing and direct brushwork, it is hardly surprising that he found this impossible to achieve satisfactorily.

As compensation he made the present study of Marga which he then gave to her. Comparison of the present portrait with the 1908 version does not show a girl two years older, so it is possible that de László copied the head from the abandoned portrait rather than having Marga sit to him again. That Marga is dressed identically in both versions would seem to corroborate this.

Marga was born in London on 28 October 1897, the younger daughter of the banker Baron Bruno von Schröder (1867-1940) and his wife Emma, née Deichmann (1870-1944). She never married and continued to live with her parents at Dell Park, remaining there after their deaths, although most of the large house was shut up. Convinced that she was preserving the property for the next generation, she occupied herself by managing a small dairy herd. After her death at Dell Park on 20 June 1977, the house, by then largely derelict, was sold to a property developer and turned into a hotel.

Marga and her sister have been largely credited with saving Schröder’s bank through loyally holding on to their shares in difficult times.

LITERATURE:  

•Schröder, Baroness Emma von, Description of Dell Park, 1934-37, unpublished

•DLA066-0073-74, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 8 July 1910

CWS 2008