5994

Study portrait

Paul Ferdinand Anton Laib 1934

Head and shoulders in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a dark suit and tie

Oil on board, 72.4 x 47 cm (28 ½ x 18 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: during one hour + ¾ / my Xmas present / de László / 1934. XII.

Laib L19473 (606) / C14 (27A): Mr. Paul Laib

NPG Album 1934, f. 38

Courtauld Institute of Art, London

Paul Laib worked as de László’s photographer from about 1911 until the artist’s death in 1937. Many of his photographs of the artist’s work were compiled by de László into a series of albums, which are now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. The artist’s sitters were also able to order multiple copies of the photographs to give to family members, and de László often inscribed these with a personal message.    

Paul Ferdinand Anton Laib was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1869. It is unclear when he emigrated to England but the first published record of his working as a fine art photographer in London is found in Michael Pritchard’s, A Directory of London Photographers, 1841-1908, giving his address in 1898 as 8 Haverstock Hill. He was working as a photographer as early as 1892, living for short periods in Brixton, Waltham Green, Regent’s Park and Euston. Early in 1898 he moved to 50, Clareville Grove, Kensington and practiced as ‘The Art Reproduction Company’ aided by the son of a close family friend, Seymour Edgar Hubbard. He was living at Clareville Grove at the time of his marriage to Harriott Kettle, musician, in November 1898. A few days before his marriage, Laib applied for a Certificate of Naturalisation which was successful, and he received his documentation in March 1899. His new status as a naturalised British subject is recorded in the census of 1901, and a new address, 3 Thistle Grove, Chelsea, is where Laib continued to live and work for the rest of his life.

Business flourished and it is apparent, from his inscriptions on the glass negatives and from his ledger books that he worked well into the 1950s when he was over eighty years old. He died in 1958 leaving the fine art photography business to continue as ‘Paul Laib Limited’ under his son Eric Paul Laib and Horace Fergus Gilchrist, who had been made a director during Paul Laib’s lifetime. The company continued until 1972, when Eric Laib retired shortly before his seventieth birthday.

At the closure of business the entire collection of negatives, amassed throughout the company’s lifetime, would have been destroyed but for the intervention of Patrick and Damon de Laszlo, son and grandson of the artist, and the collection was gifted to the Courtauld Institute in 1974.

Laib’s clients included many other major artists of the day and the glass plate negatives provide a  fascinating survey of the period as well as a vivid portrait of the artists themselves, their studios and exhibition installations. These include: John Singer Sargent, William Orpen, Alfred Munnings and Henry Moore. Many of Laib’s earlier plates are portraits of young men commissioned by their families before their departure to fight in World War I. Works from the 1920s and 1930s reflect both the more traditional academic and figurative trends in British art of the period as well as the radical movements towards abstraction and surrealism. The collection also includes work executed during World War II by official war artists. Laib photographed all types of painting and drawing – compositions and still life, portraits, landscapes and cityscapes – as well as a range of sculpture from small statuettes to monumental carvings. One interesting aspect that has come to light is the number of female artists working at the time, many of whom are now almost unknown but who exhibited regularly and had professional careers.

PROVENANCE:

Sold at Phillips, London, Modern British Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, 26 January 1988, lot 108;

Gifted to the Courtauld Institute of Art, 1989

LITERATURE:

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance,

Blackmore, 2024, p. 28, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1934 diary, private collection, 20 December entry, p. 354

We are grateful to the Courtauld Institute of Art for their assistance in compiling this entry.

KF 2018