2573

Brigadier-General Arnold Allan Cecil Keppel, 8th Earl of Albemarle 1916

Head-and-shoulders only in three-quarter profile to the right, wearing service dress and a cap

Oil on board, 43.2 x 31.75 cm (17 x 12 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P. A. de László / 1916. I 

Inscribed verso: As a gift from the artist to my father after painting my mother and dated: 12th July 1943 [pencil, in the hand of the sitter’s son, the 9th Earl]

Laib L7936 (759) / C1 (14)  

NPG 1915-16 Album, p. 1a

Sitters' Book I, opp. f. 104: Albemarle / Jan. 10. 1916

Private Collection

As indicated by the sitter’s son on the verso of this work, de László had painted a portrait of his mother, Lady Gertrude [2436], in 1909. In 1915, he also made a portrait of their son Viscount Bury [2212] in uniform. It was a gesture typical of the artist to present a close member of the family with a personal portrait such as the present one. Such pictures were achieved during the course of the sittings for the main portrait, sometimes without the sitter even knowing the second portrait was being made. De László painted sitter’s daughter-in-law, Lady Judith Wynn-Carrington in 1911 [2214].

Arnold Allan Cecil Keppel, 8th Earl of Albemarle, was born in 1858. In 1881 he married Gertrude Lucia, the only child of the 1st and last Earl Egerton of Tatton and they had four sons and a daughter. From 1892 to 1894 he was MP for Birkenhead.

In 1900 he served as Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the Infantry Battalion City Imperial Volunteers in South Africa, for which he was decorated and mentioned in dispatches. Between 1901 and 1906 he was Brigadier-General commanding Norfolk Voluntary Infantry Brigade. He was aide-de-camp to King Edward VII and to King George V, and Lord in Waiting between 1922 and 1924.

The Earl was a sculptor of considerable talent and studied in professional sculptors’ studios in London. A number of his most successful pieces were cast in bronze. His Drummer Boys (the subject taken from Kipling’s short story) now stands outside the Borough Council offices in Woodbridge, Suffolk, having been presented to the town by his daughter-in-law on her husband’s death in 1979.

The Keppel family had a long tradition of commissioning portraits from the best painters of the day. The 1st Earl of Albemarle came to England with William III and his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller is now at Mount Stewart, Northern Ireland, the home of the Londonderry family, the 8th Earl’s grandson having married Lady Mairi Vane-Tempest-Stewart [6158], daughter of the 7th Marquess of Londonderry in 1923. Numerous portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds were commissioned by the 2nd Earl and the portrait of his Countess was purchased by the National Gallery in London in 1888.

When his children were young Earl Albemarle built his own yacht, in which he would take his family on sailing expeditions. He was a fine shot, and King Edward VII occasionally came to shoot at the family home, Quidenham Park in Norfolk. Lord Albemarle died on 12 April 1942 and was succeeded by his eldest son.

EXHIBITED:          

•Christie’s, London, A Brush with Grandeur. 6-22 January 2004, no. 67

LITERATURE:        

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 135, ill.        

CWS  2008

KF 2018