PHILIP ALEXIUS DE LASZLO (HUNGARIAN 1869-1937)
THREE QUARTER LENGTH PORTRAIT OF FIELD-MARSHAL FREDERICK SLEIGH ROBERTS, 1ST EARL ROBERTS OF KANDAHAR
£11,875
Auction: Day One: 14 March 2012 From 10am
Description
, V.C., K.G., K.P., G.C.B., O.M., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., P.C., D.C.L., L.L.D.
Signed and dated 1911, oil on canvas
113cm x 81cm
Footnote
PROVENANCE:
By descent in the family;
Bequeathed to Michael Borwick by the grandson of the sitter
EXHIBITED:
Agnew's, London, Exhibition of Portraits by Philip de László, M.V.O., May-June 1911
LITERATURE:
oHart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp.164, 174
oIllustrated London News, 24 June 1911, ill.
oIllustrated London News (New York Edition), 8 July, 1911, p.59, ill.
o Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 271-2, 273, 296 & 367
o László, Lucy de, 1911 diary, private collection
Sitters' Book I, f.86: Roberts 8. Feb. 1911
Hungarian-born Philip de László was one of the most famous painters of his era, both in Europe and in the United States. He was one of the last exponents of the grand manner in portraiture, and painted the majority of the great personalities of his time, be they artists, writers, famous beauties, politicians, scientists, soldiers or statesmen. His success resulted from his charismatic personality and ability to work at prodigious speed, using the sight size technique, producing likenesses so close that he was passed from patron to patron without respite. His strength in male portraiture is evident in the present portrait and shows the General in his seventy-ninth year still exuding the control and command for which he was known throughout many years of harsh campaigning.
Lord Roberts signed the artist's Sitters' Book on 8 February 1911, however, his wife Lucy de László notes in her diary on 3 April that he had attended his first sitting at ten that morning. The coronation of King George V took place in June of the same year and, as the present portrait is dated the same month, it may have been completed to commemorate that occasion. In the same year de László also painted a full-length portrait of the sitter in service dress, commissioned for the Eton College South African Memorial Buildings, which now hangs in School Hall, Eton College [6924]. A small oil sketch for that portrait remains in the possession of a descendant of the artist [6925]. He painted a third portrait of the sitter, half-length in blue dress uniform, in the same year, which remains in the collection of Viscount Devonport [6931] while an authorized copy of it by Frederick Cullen hangs in the Naval and Military Club, St James's Square, London [6929].
Lord Roberts was a lifetime soldier and is regarded as one of Britain's greatest Generals. He was born in Cawnpore, India, 30 September 1832, the son of General Abraham Roberts, a serving officer of the East India Company, and his wife Isabella. An early illness left him blind in his right eye and very small in stature, reaching just 5'4". He was educated at Eton College and his mother hoped that he would enter the church, however Roberts had decided on a career in the army and was commissioned into the Bengal Artillery in 1851. During leave in 1859 he met and married Nora Henrietta Bews (1838-1920), with whom he had a happy and mutually supportive marriage. They had six children, three of whom died in infancy. Their second daughter Lady Ada Edwina Stewart married Henry Frederick Elliott Lewin, who was painted by de László in 1915 (see lot …). Lady Ada succeeded to her father's title after her elder sister's death in 1944, becoming Countess Roberts.
Roberts took part in fierce fighting during the Indian Mutiny and was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1857. His leadership as Major General of the forces at the Battle of Kandahar, the final battle of the Second Afgan war in 1880, caught the English public's imagination and ensured his reputation as a brilliant leader, who earned the respect of his men through his continued concern for their well-being. His career was long and illustrious and led to his holding the posts of Commander-in-Chief of India, Commander-in-Chief of South Africa, and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army.
In deference to his great reputation, Roberts was appointed Commander of Overseas Forces in England at the outset of the First World War. Then in his eighties, he made the characteristic decision to visit the Indian soldiers stationed in France. On 13 November 1914 he visited Kemmel Hill, near Messines where he had a distant view of the trenches. The day being cold, wet, and windy, he caught a chill which quickly led to his developing pneumonia. He died the next day. Sir Henry Wilson, who had entertained him at his mess two nights before noted, "The story of his life is thus completed as he would have wished, dying in the middle of the soldiers he loved so well and within sound of the guns."
His body lay in state at St. Paul's Cathedral and was, alongside Sir Winston Churchill, one of only two civilians accorded that honour in the 20th century. He was also the subject of three poems by Rudyard Kipling, who had first encountered Roberts while working as a young journalist in India in the 1880s. This led to a long and amiable connection between the families as Lord Roberts's son-in-law, Brigadier General Lewin (q.v.) also developed a friendship with the writer. Kipling was impressed by the General's affinity with his men and their great admiration for him in return, affectionately nicknaming him 'Bobs.'
The present portrait was inherited by the sitter's grandson Freddy Lewin, with the de László portrait of his father Brigadier-General Lewin. On Freddy's death in 1940 they were bequeathed to his great friend, Mr Michael Borwick, and by descent came to the present owners.
We are grateful to Sandra de Laszlo and Katherine Field for writing the catalogue entry for this portrait, which will be included in the Philip de László catalogue raisonné, currently presented in progress online: www.delaszlocatalogueraisonne.com