4594

Baroness Emile d'Erlanger, née Catherine de Robert d’Aqueria de Rochegude 1913

Head and shoulders to the right and full-face looking to the viewer, dressed to be presented at Court, in a green gown with an ornate emerald brooch at her breast and a green head-dress, decorated with a white plume

Oil on board, 92.5 x 73 cm (36 ⅜ x 28 ¾ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P. A. de László / 1913 

Laib L6695 (752) / C8 (14) Mme. D'Erlanger

NPG 1903-14 Album, p. 52, and 1907-13 Album, p. 43 where labelled: Baroness E. d’Erlanger 1913

Sitters Book I, f. 30: Emil B d’Erlanger / Rochegude [among signatures dated 1899]

Private Collection

Comparing the present portrait with de László’s 1905 study of the sitter, Oakley Williams wrote: “The sitter’s black gown and black head-dress against a light background lend a considered value to the burnished gold of the hair and to a brilliant colouring. But the expression is more restful, the challenge of the eyes less reckless. The study suggests the repose and assurance of a riper and more gracious beauty, the fruition of summer as compared with the buoyancy of spring. The whole sketch is, in fact, painted in László’s boldest and most confident manner. It is characteristic of the rapidity and sureness of his later methods that his study was begun and, after two long sittings, finished within four-and-twenty hours.”^[1]

This study of Baroness Emile d’Erlanger is the last known painting de László made of her. Compared with the earlier portraits in oil the artist painted of his sitter, [4352] it shows the specificity of his study portraits, which were to occupy an increasingly important part of his oeuvre. Executed on an unprimed board, the focus of the portrait is on the sitter’s face, while a looser brushwork is applied to her hat and dress, the latter just indicated. This freer technique is also prevalent in her neck and décolleté, to which the artist had applied more detail in previous paintings.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4352].

PROVENANCE:  

Presented by the artist to Princess Jean Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge on the occasion of her marriage, 14 November 1923

EXHIBITED:          

•Thos. Agnew & Sons, London, On Behalf of the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution. Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. László, M.V.O., June-July, 1913, no. 37

LITERATURE:          

•Williams, Oakley, ed., Selections from the Work of P.A. de László, Hutchinson, London, 1921, pp. 201-4 ill. facing p. 200

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 181

CC 2008