4421

Winifred Anna Cavendish-Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, née Winifred Dallas-Yorke 1912

Head and shoulders in semi-profile to the right, wearing a yellow dress with cream lace collar and a black ribbon bow, a string of pearls around her neck, pearl earrings and a blue bandeau in her hair

Oil on canvasboard, 50.8 x 41 cm (20 x 16 ⅛ in.)

Sitters’ Book I, f. 88: Winifred Portland Feby. 5th 1912 / Welbeck

Private Collection

De László painted his first portraits in oil of the Duchess of Portland in 1912. In February, he completed the formal ‘Queen Mary’s pearls’ portrait [4411]. Such was the impact made by that portrait that he was invited to stay at Langwell^[1] by the Portlands during the stalking season in September 1912, where he painted the present, much more informal portrait with the Duchess in day dress. Both the background circumstances and the relaxed style of painting illustrate the evolution of the artist’s relationship with his new patrons, whose friendship was to enhance de László’s life both personally and professionally over the ensuing twenty-five years.

While at Langwell, de László also made a half-length portrait of the Duchess reclining in a sofa, wearing the same dress as in the present painting, and inscribed in pencil: “P A de László / Langwell / 1912 Sept NB.” Recorded as a “sketch for [the] completed head” in the Portland collection inventory, it should probably rather be regarded as one of two versions of the same subject, executed during the same sittings. Although in his memoirs, the Duke of Portland introduced the present portrait as a finished work,^[2] the fact that it does not bear any inscription, while the half-length portrait was only signed in pencil,^[3] suggests that neither of them were commissioned works, but painted by de László for his own pleasure, encouraged by the burgeoning friendship between patron and painter.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4411].

LITERATURE:         

•Correspondence from the Duchess of Devonshire to her husband the 9th Duke, 27 November 1912, Devonshire Mss., Chatsworth. By permission of the Duke of Devonshire

•DLA 1914 parcel, Lederer, Louise, “The Silver Wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Portland,” Woman at Home, ill.

•Goulding, Richard W., The Catalogue of Pictures. The Duke of Portland. Prepared by C. K. Adams, Cambridge University Press, 1936 (Private printing of 150 copies), nº 942

•Portland, William Cavendish-Bentinck (6th Duke), Men, Women and Things, Memories of the Duke of Portland, K.G., G.C.V.O., London, 1937, p. 221

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 275

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 131

CC 2008