7771

Sir John Wormald  1922

Half-length to the right, full-face and looking towards the left, wearing a dark suit and tie with a white wing collared shirt and gold cufflinks, his arms folded across his chest, all against a dark background

Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 69.9 cm (35 ½ x 27 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1922 / XII   

Laib L11033 (882) / C28 (16): John Warmhold [sic]

N.P.G. 1921-23 Album, p. 44

Sitters' Book II, f. 32: John Wormald 7th Decr. 1922

Private Collection

This portrait was the second that de László painted of Sir John, the first [7773] having been rejected by the sitter who was extremely dissatisfied with it. De László offered to paint a portrait, without charge, of the sitter's beautiful daughter-in-law, Mrs Leslie Wormald, née Amey Horsey, with her own daughter, Patricia. However Sir John refused this offer and insisted that he be painted again.

John Wormald, the eldest son of the ten children of Joseph Dawson Wormald of Edinburgh (1830-1883), a Writer to Her Majesty’s Signet, and his wife Mary Anderson from Carse of Gowrie (1834-1878), was born on 1 July 1859. He was educated at The Royal High School - where he excelled at Greek and won the Scottish School Championship and the 100 and 300 yards races - and at Edinburgh University.  His mother died early and his father became an alcoholic, leaving young John as head of the family aged only twenty-two. His first employment was as a chartered accountant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with a salary of thirty shillings per week, with ten siblings to support.  He then worked for Barlow and Jones of Bolton in the office of their mills, developing an interest in the practical side of the cotton trade. In due course he became Chairman and then Managing Director of the Manchester and Westminster Mechanical, Electrical and Hydraulic Engineers, Mather & Platt, Ltd, having started there as an office boy. The sitter was instrumental in introducing the automatic sprinkler to England and in founding Dowson & Taylor Ltd, as one of its four chairmen. He opened the first London office of the company in Victoria Street, Westminster. He later formed the French Grinnell Company and with the help of his two brothers he started Wormald Brothers in Australia in the late 1880s. In 1900, Dowson & Taylor became Mather & Platt and the sitter became Managing Director of the company together with John Taylor, a position he held until his retirement in 1925. A J.P. of the County of Oxford, he was also High Sheriff from 1916-17, High Steward of the Ancient Borough of Wallingford and Lord of the Manor of North Stoke. From 1916-1919 he was a member of the Finance Board of the Ministry of Munitions, of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and Chairman of the Industries and General Services Committees of the War Cabinet. In 1919 was created Knight of the British Empire(civil).

He also had a particular interest in the East End and the work of Oxford House, helping Arthur Willington Ingram to purchase a Mission Hall in Bethnal Green and build a new men and boys’ club and hall for the parish of St. Matthew. When in 1897 Ingram became Bishop of Stepney, he invited John Wormald to join the council of the East London Church Fund, of which for fifteen years he was a member, and, later, Treasurer. Cosmo Lang [6161] succeeded Ingram as Bishop of Stepney, and became one of the sitter’s greatest friends.

In 1882, John Wormald married Margaret, the daughter of James Lomax of Bolton, who died three weeks after the stillbirth of their firstborn son on 27 December 1887, a day after the sitter’s sister Mary died of “consumption of the liver.” He married secondly, in April 1889, Eleanor Mabel Simms, the daughter of Henry Simms of Bath. Together they had one son, Leslie; and three daughters, Doris, Muriel and Evelyn. Sir John died on 20 May 1933.

EXHIBITED:        

•The French Gallery, Pall Mall, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1923, no. 50

LITERATURE:        

•Wormald, Sir John, Unpublished Autobiography, in the possession of the sitter’s descendants

CC 2008