3440

Preparatory drawing

Mr & Mrs Larz Anderson 1925

Seated full-length in formal evening dress

Crayon on buff paper, 20.3 x 16.5 cm (8 x 6 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: 1925 10 nov   

Sitters’ Book II, f. 48: Isabel Anderson / Larz Anderson / Washington / March 1926 / "Mr & Mrs A" Larz Anderson

The Society of the Cincinnati Headquarters, Library and Museum at Anderson House

This drawing is a good example of the very deft sketches de László made to determine the composition of his portraits. If one compares it with the finished portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Larz Anderson [2589], one can observe that the compositional scheme hardly changed, demonstrating that the artist’s first instinct for the arrangement of the figures was successful. It was drawn at ‘Weld,’ in Brookline, Massachusetts.

PROVENANCE:          

Mr. & Mrs. Larz Anderson;

Presented to the Society of the Cincinnati, 1938

LITERATURE:        

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 360

•The Anderson Papers, The Society of The Cincinnati Headquarters, Library and Museum at Anderson House, folder no. 38.379

•Anderson, Isabel (ed.), Larz Anderson: Letters and Journals of a Diplomat, New York, 1940, pp. 474-6, ill.

Reproduced by permission of The Society of the Cincinnati

CC  2008