6284

Study portrait

André Maurois 1934

Half-length in three-quarter profile to the right, wearing the doctoral robes of the University of Oxford

Oil on artist’s board, 63.5 x 52 cm (25 x 20 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1934 

Laib L18537 (531) /C16 (20)  

NPG 1935 Album, p. 5

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 78: André Maurois July 14th [among other signatures dated 1934]

Studio Inventory, p. 47 (238): Monsieur André Maurois. This portrait of the distinguish-ed French Author was exhibited in the Exhibition at Wildensteins in November-December 1937. It was done at a single special sitting and was used to illustrate an article on Maurois in the book “Everyman” edited by Viscountess Dunedin.

Private Collection

It is likely that de László and André Maurois met through the agency of Marshal Lyautey, of whom Maurois wrote a biography in 1931, two years after de László painted the Marshal’s portrait [6118]. The first letters exchanged between Maurois’s wife’s Simone and the artist date from then and concern the reproduction of de László’s portrait in the English version of Maurois’s biography.^[1] 

De László admired the writer’s work, and when, in 1934, Viscountess Dunedin told the artist she intended to publish an article devoted to Maurois in Everyman, of which she was the editor, it was suggested he should make a charcoal drawing of Maurois as an original illustration.

He requested only one sitting, on 14 July 1934, during which he eventually executed not one, but two charcoal drawings of Maurois [6292] & [13579].^[2] On 16 and 18 July, in two subsequent sittings totaling approximately two hours, he executed the present study portrait, sketching in the doctoral robes, as Oxford had recently conferred upon Maurois an honorary doctorate.^[3] Simone Maurois liked his portrait in oil so much that the writer asked Lady Dunedin to enquire whether the artist would be happy to part with it. But de László replied to the messenger: “It gave me much pleasure to hear that Madame Maurois so much appreciates the portrait study I did of him. […] May I ask you, dear friend, to advise him, in reply to his question, that I offered to paint the study […] as a token of my admiration of him as a writer, and that I wish to keep the original for myself.”^[4]

Nevertheless, the following year, Simone Maurois raised the matter again. Explaining that Paul Laib’s photograph of her husband’s portrait never leaves her, she continued: “When looking at the photograph in my room, I often wish I possessed the real portrait, the one by the most admired and greatest painter of the age – and I wonder if, at some future time, when this most unfortunate financial depression in France has passed, you would consent to paint a replica for me […] My greatest desire would be to have my husband’s beautiful portrait during my lifetime and to leave it, by will, either to the Musée du Louvre or to the National Portrait Gallery.”^[5]

He replied that he never did replicas himself, recommending his favourite copyist Sydney Kendrick instead. He added that he wanted to exhibit the portrait at his next one-man exhibition,^[6] but that he would be prepared to come to some arrangement with her about the original.^[7] However, the portrait was still in his possession when he died in 1937.

Emile Herzog was born on 26 July 1885 in Elbeuf, the son of a textile manufacturer. He was educated at the Lycée de Rouen, where he was taught by the philosopher Alain, of whom he later wrote a biography. After obtaining a prestigious Prix d’Honneur at the Concours Général, he gained a B.A. in Literature, and soon adopted the pen name of André Maurois. Having completed his military service, he ran the family business for ten years. In 1912, he married Janine de Szymkiewicz, with whom he had two sons and one daughter. Following her death in 1924, he married secondly Simone de Caillavet. Together they had one daughter.

During the First World War he was a liaison officer with the British Army, working as an interpreter to the French. It inspired him to write two humorous novels: The Silence of Colonel Bramble (1918), which won him fame, and The Return of Doctor O’Grady (1921). He became a popular man of letters, novelist, essayist and biographer, writing a series of short biographies of English figures, including Shelley, Disraeli, Byron, and Edward VII. In 1938, Maurois was elected to the Académie Française and made an Hon. Knight of the British Empire.

At the outset of the Second World War he was appointed the French Official Observer attached to the British General Headquarters, accompanying the British Army to Belgium. In June 1940 he was sent on a mission to London, but was demobilised when the armistice was declared. From England, he travelled to Canada, but kept serving in the Free French Forces, later with the Allied forces in North Africa. It was after this time that he wrote some of his more solid biographies, including those of George Sand, Victor Hugo and Balzac. He also wrote popular histories of England, U.S.A. and France and many critical studies. He was awarded the D.C.M. and the Grand-Croix of the Légion d’honneur. He died on 9 October 1967.

The sitter was also painted by Jacques-Émile Blanche in 1924.^[8]

PROVENANCE:          

In the possession of the artist on his death;

Paul de Laszlo, his third son;

Private collection, France;

Sold Christie’s Paris, 23 June 2009, Tableaux et Dessins Anciens et du XIXème siècle, lot 157

EXHIBITED:

•Wildenstein’s, London, Exhibition of Paintings by Philip A. de László, M.V.O. 24 November-22 December, 1937, no. 30  

LITERATURE:

•Sarolea, Charles, “André Maurois, The Sympathetic Interpreter of England,” Everyman, no. 48, 24 August 1934, pp. 206-23, ill. p. 206

•Clifford, Derek, The Paintings of P. A. de Laszlo, London, 1969, monochrome ill. pl. 41

•DLA019-0130, letter from Simone Maurois to de László, 6 July 1931

•DLA076-0136, letter from de László to Lady Dunedin, 18 September 1934

•DLA076-0082, letter from Simone Maurois to de László, 9 June 1935

•DLA076-0081, letter from de László to Simone Maurois, 19 June 1935

•László, Philip de, 1934 diary, private collection, 14 July entry, p. 99; 16 July entry, p. 100; 18 July entry, p. 103

•DLA162-0479, “László Fülöpöt az angol sajtó az arcképfestészet legnagyobb hősei közé sorozza” [Philip de László is Ranked Among the Greatest Heros of Portrait Painting by the English Press], Pesti Hírlap, 28 November 1937, p. 14

CC 2008