4967

Louise Dalrymple Dundas 1911

Seated almost full-length, holding a stem of blue flowers in her left hand, her right raised to her face with one finger to her cheek, wearing a black evening gown with a fine lace collar, a black chiffon wrap shot with gold draped around her

Oil on canvas, 139.7 x 99 cm (55 x 39 in.)

Indistinctly inscribed top right:  P.A. László / 1911.V. 

Laib L5505 (785) / C7 (19) The Hon. Mrs. Dundas [sic]

NPG Album 1903-1914, p. 9

Sitters' Book I, f. 73: Louise Dundas ^[1]

Private Collection              

According to Lucy de László, the honorarium for this portrait was £525. It was commissioned and paid for by the sitter’s brother-in-law, Robert Finnie McEwen for his home Marchmont, in Berwickshire. Such was de László’s renown during the period before the First World War that he could command the highest prices for any living painter of his era. The blue flower in the sitter’s hand was added after the contemporary studio photograph was taken. There is no reason to believe that the addition was not done by de László.

De László also painted the sitter’s mother, the Honourable Mrs Dundas, in 1912 [4966]. Of Mrs Dundas’s four daughters, two were painted by de László, resulting in the present portrait and that of Mary Frances, later Mrs Robert Finnie McEwen, painted three years later [6398]. De László also painted Mr Robert Finnie McEwen in 1925 [6396], having painted their two sons, John and James in 1915 in uniform [6407] & [6414].

Louise Dalrymple Dundas was born 3 July 1881, the fourth and youngest daughter of Robert Henry Duncan Dundas and his wife Catherine Anne Carrington, who was the eldest of the fourteen children of Field Marshal Robert, 1st Lord Napier of Magdala. Before her marriage, the sitter spent a lot of time looking after her sister Mary McEwen’s four children at Bardrochat, the McEwen’s seat at Colmonell, Ayrshire. On 11 August 1914, she married the Reverend Edgar Stogdon at St Peter’s, Eaton Square, London. They had a daughter, Marigold (born 1916), who married William Green, later Bishop of Manchester, and a son, David (born 1919).

A talented violinist, the sitter was painted by Sir John Lavery holding her violin, full-length and nearly life-size. The artist painted her a second time, in a hat and coat, sitting, as if ready to travel. She was also a keen fisherman, owning several salmon rods.

Having converted to Christian Science, she refused to see doctors when she developed cancer, and died on 5 August 1940 at The Vicarage, Harrow-on-the-hill, where her husband was the Rural Dean. She is buried in the churchyard there. After her death, her portrait was taken down from Marchmont and given to her husband.

PROVENANCE:

Robert Finnie Mc Ewen, the sitter’s brother-in-law;

Edgar Stogdon, the sitter’s widower, 1940

EXHIBITED:          

•Thos. Agnew & Sons, Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. László, M.V.O., May-June 1911, no. 29

•Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Annual Exhibition, 1912, no. 86

•Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Autumn Exhibition, 1913, no. 178

LITERATURE:        

•“The Royal Scottish Academy,” The Scotsman, 13 May 1912, p. 8

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 217, ill. p. 203

•DLA121-0003, postcard from de László to Mrs. Edgar Stogdon, 14 April 1910

•László, Lucy de, 1910 diary, private collection, 2 - 4 May entry, p. 36

CC 2008