111496

Study portrait

Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark 1914

Head and shoulders, turned to the left and looking full face to the viewer, wearing a blue and white off-the-shoulder blouse, a cross on a gold chain around her neck

Oil on card, 76 x 49.5 cm (30 x 19 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P.A. de László / Athens 1914 / Easter

Private Collection

De László arrived in Athens 27 March 1914 having been invited by King Constantine I of Greece to paint members of the Royal Family. He stayed for nearly a month and painted three portraits of the King [11591] [7799] [7801], two of the Dowager Queen Olga [11592] [7794], a study portrait of Prince George [7811] and the present portrait.

It is unlikely that this was a formal commission but was probably painted by the artist in a single sitting of two to three hours as a gift to his hosts. De László’s speed with the brush made him a talented painter of children and he has here successfully depicted the direct gaze of childish innocence. Other examples of this type are: Charles de Gramont [8771], Richard and Ela Beaumont [2584] and Martha Parke Firestone [111667].  

De László met Princess Cecilie again in Darmstadt in 1933, after she had married Grand Duke George Donatus of Hesse [111495]: “I was particularly interested to meet this young newly-married couple for two reasons. First I had painted the Hereditary Prince’s portrait when he was a boy of three, and just before the war I had also painted his attractive young wife in Athens. We had met her often since the war and had received her in our own home.^[1] One day our host drove us to his palace at Darmstadt, and there again I found everything as it had been during my previous stay. What surprised us both was that, in spite of the changed political situation, and the fact that he had ceased to be the reigning Grand Duke, the people in the streets paid the same homage and showed the same respect as before. As the car drove past, the people in the street raised their hats to the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, just as I had seen them do in 1907.”^[2]  

Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark was born on 22 June 1911, the third daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark [6622] and Princess Alice of Battenberg [6615]. She married George Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse 2 February 1931. There were three children of the marriage: Prince Ludwig (born 1931), Prince Alexander (born 1933), and Princess Johanna (born 1936). The couple and their three children were killed 16 November 1937 on a flight from Darmstadt to London to attend the wedding of her brother-in-law, Prince Ludwig, in London. Cecilie was eight months pregnant at the time. Cecilie was buried with her husband, two sons and their unborn son in Darmstadt at the Rosenhöhe, the traditional burial place of the Hesse family.

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the Greek Royal Family;

Sold at Sotheby’s London, The Greek Sale, 9 November 2009, lot 162

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 229

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 138

•Field, Katherine, Philip Alexius de László; 150th Anniversary Exhibition, de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 52

•DLA042-0062, letter from Captain Menelas Metaxas to de László, 9 April 1914

KF 2017