5359

Study portrait

Mrs Clayton Glyn, née Elinor Sutherland 1914

Bust-length, full face looking directly at the viewer, wearing a black off-the-shoulder gown trimmed with white and a black chiffon wrap around her shoulders, an elaborate brooch at her breast, sapphire drop earrings and a sapphire pendant hanging from her hair just indicated on her forehead

Oil on board, 90 x 59 cm (35 ½ x 23 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P.A. de László / Paris 1914. II 

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 95: Elinor Glyn / Feb. 9th 1914

Museo del Prado, Madrid

De László painted numerous portraits of Elinor Glyn’s family, her mother Mrs. Kennedy, in 1915,^[1] her sister Lady Duff Gordon [13201] in 1913, and the sitter’s two daughters, Margot in 1923 [4650] and 1924 [4643], and Juliet in 1924 [7744]^[2] and 1925 [7748]. A further study portrait [5363] of the sitter was completed in 1927 but was destroyed during the Second World War.

The present picture was completed during three sittings in Paris, 31 January, 7 & 9 February 1914, in preparation for the formal three-quarter length [5361]. De László had been prompted to accept the commission by Lord Curzon [3890], former Viceroy of India, who felt the sitter with her striking looks and red hair would make an interesting subject. The artist was extremely busy at this time and the formal portrait was not completed until December 1914.

For biographical notes on the sitter see [5361].

PROVENANCE:

Possibly Spanish Royal Collection;

Acquired by the Ministry of Culture, Madrid, 1986^[3]

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 298-9

•Abdy, Jane, The Souls, London, 1984, p. 29

•Etherington-Smith, Meredith, and Pilcher, Jeremy, The IT Girls, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1986, pp. 167, 211

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 143-145

KF 2013