5642

Study portrait 
Constance Emily Hill 1922
Half length, full face looking to the viewer, her hands raised holding an Indian shawl over her long dark hair which is worn loose over her shoulders
Oil on board, 93 x 66 cm (36 ½ x 26 in.)
Inscribed lower right: de Laszlo / 1922 Sept

Laib L10983 (433) / C12 (21) Constance Hill
NPG 1921-23 Album, p. 46
Sitters' Book II, opp. f. 32: Constance Hill. Sep: 1922.

Private Collection

Constance was a niece of Lucy Guinness, the artist's wife. She was previously painted by de László in 1916 [5640]. She was very attached to the artist and his family and was a frequent visitor to their home in Fitzjohn's Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London.  The de Lászlós moved there in 1921 and the artist was very pleased to have been permitted to build a splendid studio in the garden behind with its entrance on Maresfield Gardens.^[1] According to family tradition, the stole seen in the present portrait belonged to Princess Indira Devi, the Maharani of Cooch Behar, who had left it behind in the studio where she had recently been painted by de László [4159].^[2] When Constance draped the stole over her head the artist enjoyed the resulting effect so much that he painted this study portrait there and then.

The artist gave the picture to Constance as a gift. It survived, with the earlier study portrait of her, as they remained in England and were put into store at the family bank (by then called Guinness Mahon & Co.) during the Second World War. De László also made a drawing of her mother, Ethel Hill, in 1905 [7967]. He painted her sister Evelyn in 1915 [5644] and Evelyn’s husband Arthur Jowett in 1919 [5855].

 
Constance Emily Hill was born in Melbourne in 1890, the younger daughter of Charles Frederic Hill and his wife Ethel Mary Guinness who was the eldest of the six sisters of Lucy, the artist's wife. Around 1900 she returned with her family to London. Some time before the outbreak of the First World War she became engaged to Jenő de Weress, a Hungarian landowner from Transylvania. On the outbreak of the war her fiancé who was in England at the time became an enemy alien and was interned on the Isle of Man. De László generously lent him some money, gave him a small monthly allowance and visited him in his internment camp.^[3] This was later regarded as a ‘hostile association’ and given as one of the reasons for de László's own arrest and internment in 1917.^[4] 

After the war, Constance married another Hungarian, Charles Orbán de Márkosfalva (Charles d'Orbán). He too was a landowner, from Mezőmadaras in Transylvania, which had become part of Romania in 1920 as a result of the Trianon peace treaty. Although fluent in French and German, Constance never mastered Hungarian and she must have felt isolated living in a manor house in a remote village in Transylvania. She returned to England on several occasions, partly to ensure that her children should be born in England and so have British citizenship. De László met her during one of her visits in the summer of 1934 and noted in his diary: "Constance looks old - depressed - she told me of all the difficulties they have to encounter now since their land has become Roumanian."^[5] 

When Hitler came to power in Germany she feared the outbreak of war and the consequences of finding herself on the wrong side. In 1936 she decided to return to England with her daughter Eve (born 1927), while her son Paul (born 1930) stayed behind with her husband. Her fears proved prophetic, for after the war her husband was interned by the communist government and his land was confiscated. In 1957 together with others, he was accused of leading a movement for Transylvanian independence. After a show trial he was executed in 1958.^[6] 

Constance suffered from anemia, but died unexpectedly in 1941, in hospital after a small operation, in Currie near Edinburgh and is buried there with her aunt Constance (Mrs Ernest Craig-Brown), the youngest of the Guinness sisters.


PROVENANCE:
By descent in the family

LITERATURE:
•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1939, pp. 317, 318
•Hart-Davis, Duff, In collaboration with Caroline Corbeau - Parsons, Philip de László. His Life and Art, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2010, p. 157

Pd'O  2013