6942

Baroness Emma von Schröder 1909

Standing almost full-length in profile to the left, three-quarter face, wearing a pearl necklace, a purple chiffon scarf over her Empire style white evening dress and holding a fan

Oil on canvas, 167.5 x 98 cm (66 x 38 ½ in.)

Inscribed upper left: P. A. László   

Laib L8557(678) / C24(12)  Baroness Schroder

NPG 1917-21 Album, p. 22

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 53: Emma Schröder / 1909.

Private Collection

De László had been invited to the Schröders’ house, Dell Park, early in 1908 to discuss painting a portrait of Baroness Emma but, claiming he was short of time, persuaded them to let him make a study of their two daughters, Dorothée and Marga [6984], instead. This visit marked the beginning of a long friendship between the artist and the Schröder family, which resulted in some twenty portraits. The present portrait was painted in 1909. De László made a second portrait, a drawing, of the sitter in 1927 [6944].

Although Emma was later to claim she regretted that her portrait and its pendant of her husband Bruno [6972] painted in 1917, were so large, the original inspiration for the format came from Sir Hubert von Herkomer’s three-quarter length portraits of Sir Henry and Lady Schröder, Bruno’s uncle and aunt, to whom he was heir.

Many years later Emma described for her children her sittings with de László in an unpublished description of Dell Park: “When we had to decide what I was to wear for the portrait I had a whole box of dresses sent from my dressmaker’s. I vividly remember getting into one much too big for me and how in the dressing room next to the studio, with the help of my maid and numerous pins, I made it fit me fairly reasonably! I went to show it to Mr de László, and found him with a visitor, to whom he introduced me. He was a great ecclesiastic […] whose portrait Mr de László had painted some time before. He was a fine-looking man of striking personality, and I felt, as you can imagine, rather shy in my pinned-together apparel![ …] At last we decided on one of my own old dresses, as it was cut in the Empire style, and I posed myself, thinking of the old portrait of my aunt, Hilda Deichmann (neé de Bunsen),^[1] which was painted by Sands.^[2] In this picture she was shown as though she was walking through a wood. After two sittings Mr de László tried painting me from the front, but he returned after all to the first, preferring the ‘lion passant’ to any other position. […] One morning I came to Mr de László and suggested that a scarf of sorts would help the dress, as it would not then ‘date’ so easily. He had had the same idea during the night, and had thought of one in black chiffon. I told him that my choice would be for purple, but this colour he waived entirely. Next morning, however, after a visit to Liberty’s, I appeared in a purple chiffon scarf. Mr de László at once loved the colour scheme, and began putting it into the picture. I then asked if it might be draped in the same way as the Empress Eugenie wore her Indian shawls, viz: with a pointed dip at the back. ‘No’ was the reply, ‘you must carry it across from elbow to elbow.’ I never said a word, but from that moment onwards I always asked my maid, before I left the dressing room, to take hold of the scarf in the middle, and to draw it down nearly to the hem of my skirt! He never said a word, but painted it like that. Afterwards, remarking on how I had had my own way, he said that he ought to put ‘Von Emma erdacht; von Philip gemacht’ [conceived by Emma; made by Philip] at the back of the picture. This I am sorry to say he never did.”^[3] 

From an aesthetic point of view, the present portrait contains strong 18th-century overtones.  In terms of composition, de László’s portrait of Emma Schröder is particularly reminiscent of George Romney’s three-quarter length portrait of Margaret Ainslie,^[4] in which the sitter is also portrayed as a “lion passant”, in three-quarter profile to the left. The train of her skirt forms a strong and elegant diagonal from the bottom right corner of the canvas to its centre. De László has further emphasised the stylish poise of his sitter in making this portrait that much taller than Romney’s.

Emma was born in Cologne on 14 March 1870, the eldest daughter of Theodor Deichmann (1837-1895), together with his two younger brothers a partner of the family bank Deichmann & Co, and his wife Maria, née Joest (1843-1901). Emma was brought up in Cologne and in the lively and cultivated environment of the Mehlemer Aue, the home of her grandparents, Wilhelm Ludwig Deichmann and his remarkable wife Lilla, who each summer would entertain not only the high society of Cologne but also some of the greatest musicians and artists of the time, most notably Johannes Brahms. On the death of Lilla Deichmann in 1888, Emma’s father inherited the estate as his elder brother, Adolf,^[5] had decided to pursue his banking career in London.

On 5 April 1894 she married in Cologne Bruno Schröder who himself had moved to London the year before to join his uncle in the merchant bank of J. Henry Schröder & Co. They set up house in Kensington before leasing a large house in Park Street, Mayfair. Exactly nine months after their marriage a son was born (who was killed in Russia in 1915), followed by two daughters and, in 1901, a second son.

In 1900 Bruno Schröder bought Heath Park, the neighbouring estate to his uncle’s, The Dell, and there Emma was able with her husband to develop a passion for collecting art. On the death of Sir Henry Schröder in 1910, Bruno inherited The Dell and his uncle’s own notable collection, and having rebuilt and renamed Heath Park Dell Park, it was Emma who took on the task of ensuring that it remained a home rather than a museum. Her careful and determined eye for detail, apparent in her description, quoted above, of her struggle with de László over her dress for the present portrait, also ensured that appropriate furnishings were chosen to complement the paintings in the house. Baroness Emma von Schröder^[6] died at Dell Park on 18 June 1944.

LITERATURE:  

•Monatshefte, Velhagen & Klasing, Berlin, Bielefield, Leipzig, Vienna, 1909/10

•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien Ph A.v. László, Bielefeld and Leipzig, (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, p. 112

•Schröder, Baroness Emma von, Description of Dell Park, 1934-7, unpublished

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p.132, ill. 79

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 101

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 135

•DLA021-0080, letter from Emma von Schröder to Lucy de László, 1 November 1933

•DLA024-0328, letter from Emma von Schröder to Lucy de László, 5 October 1936

•DLA066-0135, poem from Emma von Schröder for de László

•DLA066-0072, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László

•DLA066-0076, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László

•DLA024-0329, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 18 May

•DLA066-0067, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 30 April

•DLA066-0133, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 12 March

•DLA066-0132, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 24 November 1907

•DLA066-0063, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 2 January 1908

•DLA066-0068, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 5 August 1908

•DLA066-0071, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 5 February 1909

•DLA066-0131, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 4 August 1909

•DLA066-0069, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 7 August 1909

•DLA066-0073/74, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 8 July 1910

•DLA066-0077, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 18 April 1911

•DLA066-0126, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 16 July 1912

•DLA066-0128, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 17 October 1912

•DLA066-0129, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 3 January 1913

•DLA066-0075, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 5 April 1913

•DLA066-0070, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 19 April 1913

•DLA066-0130, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 9 March 1915

•DLA066-0134, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 24 March 1915

•DLA068-0126, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 21 December 1916

•DLA068-0129, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 22 February 1917

•DLA068-0125, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 17 March 1917

•DLA068-0130, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 4 April 1917

•DLA068-0128, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 31 May 1917

•DLA068-0131, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 16 June 1917

•DLA017-0088, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 5 December 1930

•DLA017-0087, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 29 December 1930

•DLA021-0081, letter from Emma von Schröder to de László, 4 November 1933

CWS 2008