De László

and Sargent
Richard Ormond

In the year 1907 Philip de László set up as a portrait painter in

London and John Singer Sargent retired. Society’s favourite portrait
painter, an American, was succeeded by an Hungarian in a seamless
transfer of patronage from one to the other. The people Sargent had
painted in the early 1900s de László would portray a decade or more
later, and occasionally the other way about. Their sitters came from
the highest ranks of the British establishment. Both artists sought
employment in America, and de László enjoyed a privileged position
as court painter to most of Europe’s royal families. Both were
cosmopolitan, international in outlook, and masters of high style
and painterly panache. They understood their role in giving fresh
impetus to the grand tradition of formal portraiture by harnessing a
modern sense of psychology and sensibility to the age-old claims of FIG. 1
rank and status. Portraits by Sargent and de László are marked by Philip Alexius de László 1869 - 1937
flowing brushwork and scintillating effects of light and colour that The Duchess of Portland 1912
Oil on canvas, 127 x 101.5 cm
bring their subjects vividly to life. At the same time their sitters are
Private Collection
invested with the aura of wealth and glamour, power and prestige,
through the devices of grand design and pictorial invention.
“Ask me to paint your gates, your fences, your barns, which I
should gladly do, but not the human face”, Sargent told Lady Radnor came to an abrupt end when his celebrated portrait of Mme Gautreau
in 1907.1 After twenty years of unparallelled success, he was giving (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) caused outrage at the
up as a portraitist in order to concentrate on his mural projects Salon exhibition of 1884. In the wake of the scandal, Sargent
and his landscapes and figure subjects. Lady Radnor was not the transferred himself from Paris to London, but in one sense this was
only person to remonstrate with him, and the artist came under a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. The British public was
intense pressure to lift his embargo. It seemed bizarre that the far more conservative than its French counterpart, and in Sargent’s
greatest portrait painter of his generation should renege on his own words his style was thought “beastly French”.2 Disheartened,
contract to paint the great and the good and shut up shop. he even talked at this time of giving up art altogether.
Except in rare instances, however, Sargent held firm to his It was in America rather than England that he finally made his
resolve and refused to contemplate further portrait commissions. breakthrough, on two important visits in 1887 and 1890. To his surprise,
Sargent’s career had not always been marked by effortless success. he was awarded celebrity status, and showered with more commissions
The son of expatriate American parents, he had been born and than he had time to paint. Success in London followed in 1893 when
brought up in Europe, and he had trained as a painter in the atelier his portraits of Lady Agnew and Mrs Hugh Hammersley (National Gallery
of the fashionable French portrait painter Emile Carolus-Duran. of Scotland, Edinburgh, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Early successes at the Paris Salon with portraits and subject pictures respectively) swept all before them at the Royal Academy and New

41
Gallery exhibitions of that year. Election as an associate of the Royal (1902; Chatsworth, Derbyshire) and the Marlborough Group (1905;
Academy sealed public recognition of his triumph. Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire), are magisterial creations that capture
Previously disparaged, Sargent’s daring and sophisticated style the Edwardian aristocracy in its heyday. Sargent’s achievement was
now seemed to encapsulate the spirit of the age. A directness of recognized in his own day: he was treated as a kind of living Old
characterization, revealing complicated modern people as they really Master, and his friend Auguste Rodin aptly dubbed him ‘the Van
were, distinguished his work from the beginning. Sargent’s ability to Dyck of our times’.3
capture the illusion that his sitters are inhabiting real space came And then in 1907 Sargent threw it all up. He had always been an
from his study of Velázquez and Frans Hals. Carolus-Duran had artist first and a portraitist second. He was tired of the demands
taught him how to paint exactly what he saw in terms of precisely that portraiture made on his time and his creative energy, he was
rendered tonal values. And from the Impressionists he had learnt financially independent, and there were other things he wanted to
how to capture fleeting effects of light and how to model form do more. First and foremost were his murals for the Boston Public
through colour. Sargent’s exacting training meant that his brilliant, Library, first commissioned in 1890, which had been progressing all
bravura style of painting was grounded in a thorough understanding too slowly. Secondly, there was his desire to paint more landscape
of the processes of art. He was acutely sensitive both to the and figure subjects on the long summer and autumn tours he made
individual and to the social type, and in those portraits where he to the Alps and Southern Europe. Occasionally he was forced out
really engaged with his sitter he could match the sense of who they of retirement to paint a friend, like Henry James (1913; National
were and what they represented in designs of great originality. The Portrait Gallery, London), or in time of war to offer his services on
pale and pencil-thin Graham Robertson (1894; Tate, London), in his behalf of the Red Cross, or to undertake a national commission like
long black coat, holding a jade-topped cane, remains the epitome his Generals of the First World War (1920–2; National Portrait Gallery,
of the 1890s aesthete, as Mrs Phelps Stokes in the double portrait London), but these were exceptions that proved the rule. His one
with her husband (1896; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), concession to those who clamoured for his services as a portraitist
wearing white skirt and boater, is quintessentially a ‘new woman’. was the charcoal drawing, an image of head and shoulders, executed
Many of Sargent’s sitters in the 1890s had been members of the in a sitting of an hour or two. Sargent did more than six hundred of
thrusting new class of financiers and entrepreneurs, both British these in the last part of his career, and they form a parallel portrait
and American, and the same is true of de László’s early sitters. gallery to the oils, but in a minor key.
The glamorous, cosmopolitan style of both artists appealed to the Those who deplored the void left by Sargent’s departure did not
extrovert instincts of this new class, their desire for prestige and have long to wait. Philip de László, arriving in London in the very
recognition. By 1900, it was the turn of the aristocracy, who had year that Sargent retired, had all the right credentials to succeed
finally woken up to Sargent’s genius as an image-maker. In the him. He already enjoyed royal and aristocratic patronage in Europe;
full-length portraits and groups he painted for Blenheim and he was, like Sargent, a conjuror with the brush, and like him he
Chatsworth, Welbeck and Warwick Castle, Sargent proved himself successfully combined a modern style of painting and a modern
heir to the great portrait tradition. His pictures looked quite at home sense of psychology with the traditional props of formal portraiture.
with works by Van Dyck and Lely, Reynolds and Gainsborough, His foreign polish and panache appealed to the British establishment,
Romney and Lawrence, in the great houses of Britain. His portraits who recognized in him a mythologist who would help them to
exemplify the grandeur and wealth, the dynastic tradition and the re-invent themselves. László’s vivid sense of people, his forceful
patent of nobility of these Edwardian grandees, who had ruled brushwork and flowing style of painting quickly won him admirers.
Britain for generations, at the very moment when power was slipping His arrival in London was heralded by an exhibition of fifty recent
from their grasp. portraits at the Fine Art Society, which included those of a number
Sargent adapted his vibrant bravura style to the demands of of prominent British sitters. Critics gave the artist vigorous reviews
formal composition. His deep knowledge of the Old Masters, going and a somewhat mixed reception, and inevitable comparisons were
back to his itinerant childhood, assisted by his mural work for the made to the work of Sargent, but the show helped to establish de
Boston Public Library, gave him the necessary resources to raise his László’s credentials as his successor. Commissions flowed in, from
game. His portraits of Lord Dalhousie (1900; private collection) and the king downwards; Edward VII commanded the artist to begin
Lord Ribblesdale (1902; Tate, London), the Duchess of Portland (fig. 1) a portrait of his daughter, Princess Victoria, on the day he visited
and the Countess of Warwick and her Son (1905; Worcester Art the exhibition, and the artist’s career in Britain quickly took off.4
Museum, Massachusetts), and the groups of the Wyndham Sisters What did the two artists think of each other? We know that de
(1899; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), the Misses Acheson László admired Sargent’s work and regarded him as the benchmark

42
 against which to measure his own success. When in Boston, in hugely. Sargent found (in the studio) the only fault that I ever did: that
1908, he made a point of going to see Sargent’s great Spanish Dance it gives an impression of a bigger face than mine.”10 In 1919, during de
picture, El Jaleo (1880–2; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), Làszló’s internment, Sargent urged the President of the Royal Academy
and he wrote: “No contemporary picture has impressed me so to write to the Home Secretary to allow the artist the use of a model.11
profoundly. It displays Sargent’s mastery of his art and reproduces Though Sargent and de László were both expatriates and shared
the very atmosphere of Spain, together with the lovely figure of the a common style of bravura painting, derived from training in Paris,
passionate and graceful dancer”.5 Painting Edward VII’s portrait in they came from very different backgrounds, and they were poles
1907, de László was present when the names of Hubert von Herkomer apart in outlook and temperament. The reserved and stolid Sargent,
and Sargent were proposed for knighthoods, “for I admired the work reared on New England principles, was a complete contrast to the
of both artists, particularly Sargent’s”. The king expressed his regret impulsive and romantic Hungarian. Though he never relinquished
that he could not confer the honour on Sargent because he was not a his American citizenship, Sargent was rooted in the British art
British subject: “‘I am very sorry to hear that’, said the King. ‘There is establishment as de László, who did become a British citizen, never
no one on whom I would more willingly have conferred that honour. really was. Every year, Sargent sent his major portraits to the annual
Sargent is a great artist whose work will live’.”6 Royal Academy exhibition – over fifty of them between 1900 and
That cordial relations existed between the two men we know from 1908 – and they were the subject of extensive notice in the media.
a small group of surviving letters from Sargent to de László. Two of He exhibited widely elsewhere, especially in America, but his chosen
these concern a proposed exhibition in Vienna to which Sargent had forum was the Royal Academy and he was a pillar of the institution.
been invited to contribute. In the first letter, Sargent writes cordially De László, by contrast, exhibited only a handful of works at the
to “My dear Laszlo” from Amsterdam, where he was recovering from Academy, and he realized early on that he was unlikely to be
a bout of influenza: “I hope to be well enough to go back to London accepted there.12 He was too blatantly foreign, in a way that Sargent
in a few days, and I will try to borrow some good portrait, or if I do was not, and his style was not generally admired in academic circles.
not succeed in that, I will send one of the few things that belong to It would be wrong, however, to think of him as isolated in the art
me”. Sargent approached the Duke and Duchess of Connaught about world. Surviving correspondence shows that he was friendly with
the possibility of borrowing their portraits, and he told de László many leading British painters, among them Sir Luke Fildes, an R.A.
that the Vienna authorities would have to solicit them officially: who was especially supportive, the Hon. John Collier, W.F. Calderon,
“So I have written to Prof von Angeli to explain this, and I hope they Herbert Draper, Frank Brangwyn and Sir John Lavery. De László did
will send a formal request – If you are in Vienna would you tell him exhibit occasionally at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and he
that seems to be a condition”.7 So far it has not been possible to confirm became president of the Royal Society of British Artists, but his
what the exhibition was or whether the portraits travelled there. favourite exhibition vehicle was the one-man show, carefully
A third letter concerns another exhibition, this time in Berlin, where orchestrated and promoted, which put the spotlight on him as a
de László again seems to have had a co-ordinating role. Sargent was cosmopolitan artist with an international clientèle. Recognition in
unclear whether inclusion in the show was “by invitation, or whether Britain mattered to him as long as it was on his terms, and he was
the exhibition defrays the expense of transport etc …. I am thinking of not dependent on it. His network of influential patrons ensured that
sending a very large and heavy thing in bronze, besides a picture or two, he was in constant demand. Both he and Sargent enjoyed considerable
& I should like to know this point”.8 Apart from the letters there are patronage in America, but Sargent was native-born and his professional
two note cards from Sargent warmly inviting de László to visit him links with his home country went back to the very start of his career
in his studio. In one of these, dating from 1909, he writes: “I shall be in the 1870s. On the other hand, de László had a flourishing European
delighted to show you Lord Wemyss’ portrait. Can you come some practice which Sargent lacked after 1885, and de László had made a
morning before you go to your own work? I am generally at my other speciality of royal portraiture.
studio now, but if you will name any morning I will be delighted to see Not since F.X. Winterhalter had any artist serviced the courts of
you.”9 Both Sargent and de László were to paint this grand old Scottish Europe so expertly and comprehensively. Monarchs were charmed
aristocrat and sportsman in celebration of his ninetieth birthday, and by de László personally and enchanted with his art, which made
both did justice to their subject’s leonine head and majestic personality. them appear far more regal and glamorous than they really were.
That Sargent had an eye for de László’s work is made clear in a letter Like Winterhalter before him, he re-invented the state portrait, and
from Margot Asquith to the Hungarian artist about her own portrait gave the royals he painted a fresh modern look. The contacts he
by him: “As you know I think it wonderfully clever & much more established gave him opportunities to move from one court to
interesting than I am. The only people who have seen it, admire it another, from Stockholm to Madrid, London to Berlin, Vienna to

43
Athens. A first commission would inevitably lead to others, so that
whole dynasties ended up being painted by him. He could be relied
on to produce images of power and authority that were also human
and engaging. His style slid effortlessly across borders to establish an
international iconography of royalty that underlined the close family
relationships which bound the European courts so closely together.
Sargent, by contrast, shied away from royalty. He refused the
commission to paint Edward VII’s coronation and his only portrait of
the king was a drawing after death (Royal Library, Windsor Castle).
He did paint a pair of portraits of Queen Victoria’s fourth son, Prince
Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and his wife Princess Louise (1906; Royal
LEFT FIG. 2
Collection Trust), but this was no substitute for a state portrait of the John Singer Sargent 1856 - 1925
king, which would have tested his powers to the full and might have Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1910
produced a masterpiece. Maybe his democratic principles stood in Oil on canvas, 130.8 x 105.4 cm
the way of such a commission, for Edward VII, an admirer as we have Lambeth Palace, London

seen, would surely have sat to him if asked. De László did paint the
ABOVE FIG . 3
king but only in mufti, and his portrait, like that of Queen Alexandra Philip Alexius de László 1869 - 1937
have recently been traced to the Norwegian Royal Collection. Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1926
In painting the great and the good of the British establishment, Oil on canvas, 251.5 x 139.7 cm
Sargent and de László adopted strategies that point up the similarities The Corporation of the Church House, London

and differences that distinguish their portraits. Sargent had made a

44
 FIG. 4 (left)
John Singer Sargent
Field Marshal Earl Roberts of
Kandahar, 1908
Oil on canvas,161.9 x 102.9 cm
National Portrait Gallery, London

FIG. 5 (right)
Philip Alexius de László
Field Marshal Earl Roberts of
Kandahar, 1911
Oil on canvas, 172.8 x 113.7 cm
Eton College, Windsor

exception to his portrait embargo in agreeing to paint Randall with pageant and symbol, while de László portrayts him as a
Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1910 for Lambeth Palace straightforward military man (figs. 4 and 5). So encrusted with medals
(fig. 2), because they had met in the Alps and were friends. Sargent’s and order is Roberts in Sargent’s portrait that one critic complained
portrait of Davidson in his surplice and robes draws on the traditional of the way the “truculent splendour of the uniform overshadows the
imagery reserved for princes of the church, but plays it in a minor individuality of the wearer”.13 The baroque swagger of the figure is
key. We see this modest and conscientious churchman in the private set off by a receding vista of columns and pilasters in a grand staircase
setting of his study with a jumble of books and documents on the hall. De László’s portrait, painted three years later for Eton College,
table beside him. De László’s 1926 full-length of the Archbishop for shows an older and more careworn figure, his hand resting on a map
Church House, London (fig. 3) draws on the same iconographical as if still in active command. The background is bare of accessories
conventions as Sargent does, but goes for the full panoply of except for a cascading piece of drapery, perhaps a flag.
ecclesiastical splendour and symbol. The Gothic throne on which Another pair of portraits painted within a short space of time
Davidson sits had been used by him at the coronations of Edward VII are those of George Curzon, Earl Curzon, the brilliant but arrogant
and George V, and it invests him with the aura of authority as leader statesman who held high office but was never Prime Minister. This
of the Church. He holds a book on his knee and his crozier stands time it was de László’s portrait that came first, in 1913, for All Souls
beside the throne. De László records the nervousness of the Archbishop College, Oxford. There is something forbidding and mask-like about
when shown the preliminary sketches because he feared the picture the sitter, who gazes out with a fixed and penetrating expression on
would be thought too artificial and ‘showy’. Interestingly, de László his features. One hand is held to his chin, in the traditional image of
hides Davidson’s Garter Star in the fold of the vestments, exactly as the thinker, while the claw-like fingers of the other hand are inserted
Sargent had done sixteen years earlier. between the pages of a book. He is dressed in his robes as Chancellor
In the case of the veteran Field Marshal Earl Roberts, a much loved of Oxford University, and the artist paints the lace cravat and cuffs
figure familiarly known as ‘Bobs’, it is Sargent who invests the sitter and the gold braid of the robe in that lovely, flowing, impressionistic

45
FIG. 6
Philip Alexius de László
Arthur James Balfour, 1914
Oil on canvas, 117 x 85.7 cm
National Portrait Gallery, London

style that is his hallmark. Sargent’s characterization is less intense

and more human, but there is surely irony in this image of self- FIG. 7
conceit. Curzon is dressed there in Garter Robes as the embodiment John Singer Sargent
of steely will-power and aristocratic hauteur. The portrait was Arthur James Balfour, 1908
painted a year after the de László, in July 1914, and one month before Oil on canvas, 256.5 x 147.3 cm
National Portrait Gallery, London
the outbreak of the Great War, in recognition of Curzon’s services
to the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was president.
Both artists would paint portraits of Lady Curzon, and de László
also made a memorable portrait of Curzon’s mistress, Elinor Glyn,
together with two studies.
Another of the dominating political figures of the age painted
by both artists was A.J. Balfour, conservative Prime Minister,

46
 philosopher and leading member of the ‘Souls’, a patrician group
intellectuals and aesthetes. Both pictures were painted in the same
year, 1908, and they were exhibited contemporaneously, Sargent’s
(fig. 7) at the Royal Academy, de László’s at a one-man exhibition
at Dowdeswell’s Galleries in New Bond Street. Critics were not
slow to draw comparisons between the two works: “As against
Mr. Sargent’s masterly full-length and its subtle seizure of the
intellectual character of the subject, Mr. Laszlo has attempted a
‘kit-kat’ with a fresher complexion than Mr. Sargent’s and has tried
no subtleties at all.”14 De László’s 1908 portrait is missing, although
there is a later somewhat introspective oil study in the National
Portrait Gallery (fig. 6). He was up against one of Sargent’s most
brilliant creations, a full-length figure, nonchalant and world weary;
it was commissioned by the Carlton Club and has recently been
acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.
The cross-over between Sargent and de László in terms of sitters
is prodigious: they portrayed more than fifty of the same people.
These range from royalty, the Duke and Duchess of York (later George
VI and Queen Elizabeth) and the Duke of Connaught; statesmen,
President Roosevelt and Lord Cromer; military commanders, Lord
Byng of Vimy and the Earl of Cavan; aristocrats, the Duke and Duchess
of Portland, the Duchess of Devonshire, the Duchess of Wellington
and the Marchioness of Londonderry; leading society women, Gladys
Vanderbilt (Countess Széchényi) and Mrs William Cazalet; musicians,
Joseph Joachim and Sir George Henschel. The list is even longer if
members of the same families are included.
Comparison of the female portraits is particularly instructive,
because it is as painters of women that both artists are best known.
A decade or more invariably separates their respective portraits of
the same sitter, Sargent painting them as young or young middle-
aged, de László as mature matrons. Winifred, Duchess of Portland,
one of the great beauties of the age, was painted by Sargent in 1902,
when she was thirty nine, though you would never guess that from
Sargent’s youthful-looking image (fig. 8). Dressed in a white evening
gown with stand-up Van Dyck collar, cerise cape, and strings of
pearls draped across her corsage, she stands perched momentarily
on the edge of the marble fireplace in the Gobelins Tapestry room
at Welbeck Abbey, the Portland family home. She is a mixture of
nervous vitality, high breeding and aristocratic grandeur. De László’s
three-quarter length portrait (fig. 9), painted exactly ten years later,
just recently traced, is a more stately and reflective image, showing
the Duchess seated and gazing into space, lips parted, as if in
thought. She is again dressed in evening gown and cape, and she
FIG. 8
fingers a pearl necklace in one hand like a rosary, with a classical
John Singer Sargent,
filet of leaves in her hair. She is still stunningly beautiful at fifty, and The Duchess of Portland, 1902
de László grasps the essence of her radiant personality in one of his Oil on canvas, 228.6 x 111.8 cm.
most accomplished works. Other portraits of the Duchess were to Private Collection

47
FIG. 9
FIG. 10
John Singer Sargent
Philip Alexius de László
Mrs. Julius Wernher
Lady Wernher
(Later Lady Wernher)
Oil on canvas, 175.3 x 111.8 cm
Oil on canvas, 147.3 x 35.3 cm
Private Collection
The Wernher Collection

48
 follow, including a half-length of this same period, a fine drawing, VII’s coronation, attended by his page (recently acquired by the
and a head and shoulders sketch of 1928 in tiara and blue chiffon Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
veil (private collection). It would be wrong to make too much of such comparisons.
A more conventional parallel is to be found in the portraits of Sargent had effectively ceased painting portraits in 1907, while de
Mrs Julius (later Lady) Wernher, the wife of a prominent diamond László was to continue for another thirty years, and his style changed
tycoon, whose house at Luton Hoo, Hertfordshire, was the setting markedly in the post-war period in response to the changing mood
for a magnificent collection of old master paintings and works of art. and fashion of the time. He was infinitely more prolific than Sargent,
Sargent’s portrait of her (fig. 9) is one of those luxuriant studies of producing his characteristic portrait heads, so instinct with life
women in white that goes back to the famous portrait of Lady Agnew. and panache, often in a single sitting. He amassed a vastly greater
Mrs Julius Wernher, as she then was, is dressed in an evening gown clientèle, that spanned Europe and America, and he remained a
with lilac and light blue trimmings, sash and ribboned headdress, a portrait painter through and through. There would be no grand
dramatic choker and fur stole, and she is seated in an Empire-style mural scheme or landscape ambitions to lure him away from the
fauteuil with swan’s head scroll-ends. Behind is one of the boiserie panels thing he did best and push him into early retirement. The demands
in Sargent’s Tite Street studio. Mrs Wernher has all the attributes of made on him never wore down his patience or dulled his spirit. He
wealth and social distinction, but they do not seem to sit easily with remained buoyant to the end, painting his late portraits with all the
her, and the sense of make-believe is too evident. No such doubts energy and flair he had displayed as a young man, with no loss of
inform de László’s portrait of the same sitter, by now Lady Wernher, force or character. Like Sargent before him, he left behind a portrait
painted a dozen years later (fig. 10). The style of dress is opulently gallery of many of the great figures of the age, and his contribution
eighteenth-century revival, like the Louis XVI chair occupied by a deserves greater recognition.
pekinese, and Lady Wernher stands in a resolutely commanding
pose amidst the soft flutter of dress and drapes. 1. Quoted in Stanley Olson, John Singer Sargent His Portrait, London and New York
Such parallels could be multiplied. The innocent-looking 1986, p. 228
2. Letter to Edward Russell, 10 September 1885, Tate Gallery Archives.
debutantes in Sargent’s three-quarter-length portraits of Gladys
3. Rodin’s comment recorded in an interview, ‘Rodin in London’, Daily Chronicle,
Vanderbilt, later Countess Széchényi, and Maud Coats, later Marchioness London, 16 May 1902.
of Douro and Duchess of Wellington (both 1906; private collections), 4. De László later painted portraits of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra (qv) and
received the M.V.O., the personal gift of the Monarch, in 1910; see Owen Rutter,
turn into the experienced women of the world in the greater realism
Portrait of a Painter The Authorized Life of Philip de László, London 1939, pp. 235-42.
of de László’s post-war images (1921 and 1922; private collections). 5. Ibid., p. 255.
In the case of the autocratic Lady Londonderry, wife of the sixth 6. Ibid., p. 241.
7. Both letters in the de László family archive. I am grateful to Suzanne Bailey for
Marquess, both artists arrived at the same conclusion. The marchioness
these references.
swept aside Sargent’s objections and offer of a charcoal, and insisted 8. Ditto; the bronze must have been Sargent’s crucifix, later placed in the crypt of
on being painted in oils (1909; private collection). The only defence St. Paul’s as a memorial to the artist
9. Ditto.
he offered was to limit the number of sittings, telling her that he 10. Letter of 30 March 1910, from 10 Downing Street, de László family archive.
would spoil the sketch if he touched it again, “by losing all its lightness 11. See the letter from de László’s solicitor, Sir Charles Russell, to the artist’s wife
and freshness. I have done a tiny thing here and there, and you are as of 11 February 1919, de László family archive.
12. His portrait of Lord Stanley of Alderley was rejected by the Royal Academy in
beautiful as the morning star, and nothing will induce me to mar it 1905. His first picture to be shown there was Lady Wantage (see cat. 000). In 1915
with a brush!”15 Sargent portrayed the marchioness in a flamboyant Lord Devonport was rejected because the Academy had decided not to show any
plumed hat, with a voluminous cloak, feather boa and pearl works by natives of countries with whom Britain was at war, even if (as de László
was) they were naturalized.
necklace. Her head is tilted up, eyes heavy lidded, nostrils flared, the 13. Academy, London, 12 May 1906, p. 455.
incarnation of aristocratic hauteur and disdain. De László’s portrait 14. Quoted in Rutter 1939, p. 264. There is a 1914 portrait of Balfour by de László
sketch of 1917 also shows her with her nose in the air in a style no in Cambridge.
15. Londonderry Papers, North Ireland Public Record Office, 2846/2/23/60.
less intimidating, in evening dress with black choker, swept-back
hair, drop earrings and triple pearl necklace. Both artists play up to
Lady Londonderry’s persona as terrifying grand dame, who could
reduce the greatest of statesmen to quivering wrecks, for she ran
a political salon. Sargent also painted her husband in one of his
grandest compositions, with the marquess posed before a view of
Westminster Abbey, carrying the sword of state as he had at Edward

49