6703

The Honourable Mrs Cyril Myles Ponsonby, née Rita Longfield 1914

Standing three-quarter length to the right in a landscape, with her back towards the viewer and looking over her right shoulder; wearing a lilac Grecian dress and holding a large basket of grapes, a cloudy sky and trees beyond

Oil on canvas, 114.3 x 87.7 cm (45 x 34 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P. A. de László / 1914. July

Laib L7686(686) / C22(37) Mrs. Ponsonby

NPG Album 1913-15, p. 39

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 93: Rita Ponsonby . July 12th 1913.

Sitters’ Book I, f. 97: Rita Ponsonby July 1914

Private Collection

The style of this portrait is unusual in de László’s oeuvre and owes something to George Romney’s numerous paintings of Emma Hamilton in classical attitude, particularly Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante (1785). The artist  may also have been inspired by his visit to Athens in April 1914, where he painted nine portraits of King Constantine [11591] and other members of the Greek royal family. Other portraits of this classical type include Baroness Emile d’Erlanger [4352] of 1899 and Countess of Verulam and her son of 1919 [4734].

The portrait was completed by 26 July 1914, when Countess Bessborough sent the artist a letter to arrange a date to visit his Campden Hill studio to see it.^[1] It was loaned to the 5th Annual Exhibition of the National Portrait Society in 1916, where it hung with that of her husband in service dress [6702], painted in 1915 just a few months before he was killed in France. That portrait was destroyed in a fire in 1923 at Bessborough House, Ireland, so it is not possible to determine whether they were intended as a pendant pair.

De László also painted the sitter’s sister Norah in 1916 [3032], her brother-in-law, the 9th Earl of Bessborough, in 1915 [2431], Anne Marie Ponsonby, wife of her son Cyril [7176] in 1932 and Lady Sysonby [2797] who was married to Sir Frederick Ponsonby of a junior branch of the family.  

Rita Narcissa Longfield was born 29 November 1891 at 27 Grosvenor Square, London, the eldest daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Mountifort John Courtenay Longfield of the 2nd Lifeguards and Castle Mary, Co. Cork, and his wife Elizabeth Armstrong. In 1911 she married The Honourable Cyril Myles Ponsonby, son of the 8th Earl of Bessborough and his wife Blanche Vere Guest. They had a son, Arthur (born 1912), later 11th Earl of Bessborough. Her husband was killed in France in 1915 and she married secondly Neville Alfred Cyril Flower at St George’s Hanover Square in 1918. Their daughter Anne was born in 1920.

The sitter inherited Castle Mary from her father in 1929 and lived there and in London. She was a famous beauty and an accomplished horsewoman, hunting side saddle all her life. The gardens she created were stocked with plants she collected from around the world.

The sitter’s second husband predeceased her 3 April 1931 shortly after she had travelled to Canada to stay with Earl Bessborough, her first husband’s brother then serving as Governor General. She died in 1977.

LITERATURE:

•DLA054-0130, Countess Bessborough to de László, 26 July 1914

KF 2020