13475

Lady Jane Evelyn Lindsay 1911

Seated half-length to the left in three-quarter profile, head turned almost full face to the viewer, her hair worn up in a pompadour, wearing a white chiffon stole over a black evening gown, with a black lace choker, a long gold chain held in both hands and pearl earrings

Oil on board, 94 x 68.5 cm (37 x 27 in.)

Inscribed upper right: P.A. László / 1911. / Wantage 

Inscribed lower right: [illegible] [in blue chalk]

NPG Album, 1903-14, p. 56

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 88: Jane Evelyn Lindsay Sepr. 13 1911 / Lockinge Wantage

Private Collection

De László was a guest of Lady Wantage at Lockinge 10-15 September 1911. He completed several study portraits during his stay. These include Lady Wantage after her return from church one Sunday [11384], Lady Susan Townley [7360] and the present picture. The artist also made a sketch of Lady Wantage’s Pekinese H’Wang [110784] in the Lockinge visitors’ book. Lucy de László recorded in her 1911 diary that on 15 September Lady Wantage paid £300 for this portrait of her niece.^[1] 

Jane Evelyn Lindsay was born 14 May 1862, the fifth daughter of Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford and 8th Earl of Balcarres (1812-1880), and Margaret (1824-1909), elder sister of Lady Wantage’s husband Sir Robert James Lindsay. She spent her childhood at Haigh Hall, Wigan, Lancashire, and Balcarres, Colinsburgh, Fife.  

Lady Jane was an accomplished artist and a large collection of her watercolours and drawings were sold by descendants in 1977. Subjects included designs for stained glass, illustrations to novels and poems, views of country houses associated with the family and other views in England, Europe and Egypt. The sitter apparently witnessed some of the preparations for the Anglo-Egyptian army's invasion of Sudan under General Kitchener in 1896 and four of her watercolours of this subject are now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The sitter’s family remembered Lady Jane as kind, well-informed, and amusing. She was interested in homeopathic medicine and introduced her great-niece Musette Majendie^[2] to Dr Margery Blackie, a leading homeopathic physician.^[3] Lady Jane, who never married, lived in her later years with Majendie and Dr Blackie at Hedingham Castle, Essex. The sitter died there on 2 January 1948 at the age of eighty-five.

LITERATURE:         

•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien, n° 106, Ph A. von László, Bielefeld and Leipzig (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, p. 122, ill. pl. 133

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 192

•László, Lucy de, 1911 diary, private collection, p. 189

KF 2014