7551

Antony Ronald Vickers 1928

Half-length to the right, full face to the viewer, wearing a dark blue suit, a pale blue shirt and Royal Navy tie, with a watch-chain

Oil on canvas, 80 x 61 cm (31 ½ x 24 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1928   

Laib L14941(410) / C27(32)  Mr. Vickers

NPG 1927-28 Album, p. 29

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 58: Antony Vickers [among signatures dated 1928]

Private Collection

De László painted the sitter's three cousins; Oliver in 1917 [1968], Sholto in 1923 [7555], and Angus in 1926 [5237], and Sholto’s son Alexander [10281] as a boy in 1935.

Antony Ronald Vickers was born 28 February 1901, the only son of Ronald Vickers (1869-1942), headmaster of Scaitcliffe Preparatory School in Egham, Surrey, and his first wife Esther Brown (1867-1909). The sitter commissioned his portrait as a present for his father and it hung in his study at the school.

Vickers was educated at Eton, Osborne, and the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. He was too young to serve at the start of the First World War and joined up 15 August 1917, serving as a midshipman on H.M.S. Tiger with the First Battle Cruiser Squadron. Ship and crew spent the latter years of the war patrolling the North Sea without  incident. They provided support for British light forces involved in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917, but did not come within range of any German forces.

In 1919 Vickers left the Navy and served an engineering apprenticeship with the family company Vickers Ltd., which had provided armaments for Britain throughout the war.  He also obtained an external honours degree in mechanical engineering at London University. In 1930 he became a co-founder of the Hydraulic Coupling and Engineering Co. Ltd., later known as Fluidrive Engineering Co. Ltd., which he joined full-time when he left Vickers Ltd. in 1934. He was the author of many technological publications and was a Vice-President of the Economic Research Council and a member of the Executive Committee.

Vickers married Alicia Renton at St Paul’s, Knightsbridge in December 1933. There were no children.

He died on 1 July 1970.

PROVENANCE:  

Ronald Vickers, commissioned as a gift from the sitter;

Richard Douglas Vickers, half-brother of the sitter

KF 2013