1224

Princess Xenia Georgievna of Russia 1922

Half-length to the left, head turned full face to the viewer, wearing a white chiffon wrap over a pale pink evening dress, a jade green bracelet on her left art, her hands lightly clasped at her breast

Oil on canvas, 66 x 88.9 cm (26 x 35 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / Cannes 1922 III

Middlebury College Museum of Art, Vermont

In the spring of 1922, while recovering from influenza, de László was staying at Villa Kasbeck in Cannes, the home of Prince and Princess Christopher of Greece. Despite his illness he completed five portraits: pendant full-length portraits of his host [7804] and his wife [7809], King Gustaf V of Sweden [8017], Princess Olga of Greece [11684] and the present portrait. The sitter and Princess Olga were cousins, nieces of Prince Christopher.

De László first painted the sitter [1222] and her sister Princess Nina [1225] in London in 1915, while they were stranded in England during the First World War.

For biographical details of the sitter, see [1222].

PROVENANCE:

William B. Leeds, Jr., husband of the sitter;

By descent in the family;

Bequeathed to Middlebury College Museum of Art, Vermont, by Nancy and Edward Wynkoop

EXHIBITED:

•M. Knoedler & Co., Paris, June 1922^[1]

•Doll & Richards, Boston, Massachusetts, Portraits by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., 1-10 October 1925, no. 9

•M. Knoedler & Co., New York, Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. de Laszlo, M.V.O., 19-31 October 1925, no. 4

LITERATURE:

•G. Nicholas Tantzos, ed., The Inheritors of Alexander the Great, Atlantic International Publications, New York, 1986, p. 221, ill.

•DLA109-0057, letter from de László to Doll & Richards, 1925

KF 2018