4201

Henriette Cremer 1920

Half-length to the right, standing in three-quarter profile, wearing a grey-brown riding jacket with a white stock and gold stock-pin, a wide-brimmed straw hat tied with a black ribbon, a blue iris pinned to her lapel and holding a leather crop under her right arm

Oil on canvas, 89.5 x 60 cm (35 ¼ x 23 ¾ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1920 . May.

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 15: Jetske Cremer. 1 June. 1920.

Private Collection

This portrait was executed in Holland in the summer of 1920 during the same visit that de László painted several members of the Francken and Loudon families. The present portrait was commissioned by the sitter's father, Herbert Cremer [111208]. He had already commissioned de László to paint his wife Wilhelmina, née van Marken, in 1909 [4205].

At the time that the present portrait was painted the family was living just outside The Hague. Jetske’s grandfather was painted immediately before the present portrait [10779] and her grandmother’s portrait was completed the week after [111209]. According to one of the sitter’s descendants, de László was greatly dissatisfied with his initial attempts to paint Jetske and wanted to abandon the project altogether. However, one morning he saw her standing in the hall dressed to go out riding and immediately felt that painting her in her riding clothes would best convey her character. In her diary the artist’s wife Lucy mentions the “[very] fascinating picture” as well as  the “[very] pretty young thing of 20 [...] a dear girl.”^[1] De László painted Herbert Cremer in 1927 [111208].

Henriette ‘Jetske’ Cremer was born on 19 October 1900 and raised on her grandfather’s estate, Duin en Kruidberg at Santpoort near Haarlem, in the province of Noord Holland. In 1924 she married Pieter Wilhelm ‘Bubbie’ Janssen with whom she had three children: Mienske, August and Herbert. She died on 24 November 1979.

PROVENANCE:        

Left by the sitter to her daughter;

Bequeathed to Louis van Heyst Esq.;

Walker-Bagshawe Fine Art, 1992;

LITERATURE:

•Grever, Tonko and Annemieke Heuft (Sandra de Laszlo, British ed.), De László in Holland: Dutch Masterpieces by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2006, pp. 8, 10, 52, 54, 55, 70, ill. Pl. 41

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 57

•László, Lucy de, 1920 diary, private collection, 2 June, pp. 147, 153

CWS 2006