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拍品專文
LADY GWENDELINE SPENCER-CHURCHILL AND SIR JOHN LAVERY – AN ARTISTIC RELATIONSHIP
BY PROFESSOR KENNETH MCCONKEY
In the spring of 1911, the actor Martin Harvey launched a campaign to fund the construction of a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre which he hoped would be opened to mark the tercentenary of the bard’s death in 1916. Its most successful event in that first year was the Fancy Dress Ball organised by a ladies’ committee chaired by Mrs Cornwallis-West (Winston Churchill’s mother, formerly Lady Randolph Churchill), in the Royal Albert Hall on 20 June, at which Elizabethan costume was de rigueur. The event attracted the cream of Edwardian society and not unnaturally, her daughter-in-law, Lady Gwendeline Spencer Churchill, known to friends as ‘Goonie’, would assist. John Lavery’s vivid oil sketch of Lady Gwendeline in the costume of an attendant on Portia, indicates that she was suitably attired for this large, well-reported social occasion that raised £10,000 for the cause (see lot 55). Living a stone’s throw from each other, in 5 Cromwell Place and 41 Cromwell Road respectively, the Laverys and the sitter were well acquainted at this point and before Lady Gwendeline arrived at the Ball, in addition to visiting the artist’s studio, Lavery’s sitter was also photographed by Langfier, in Old Bond Street, in an image that was published the following year.
Daughter of the 7th Earl of Abingdon, Gwendeline Mary Theresa Bertie (1885-1941) married John [Jack] Strange Spencer-Churchill, Winston Churchill's brother, in 1908. Reports before the marriage indicate that Winston had designs on Gwendeline, before his younger brother won her heart (Peregrine Churchill and Julian Mitchell, Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, London, 1974, p. 227). At this point the future Prime Minister’s attentions transferred to Gwendeline’s friend, Clementine Hozier (‘Clemmie’), and the two weddings occurred within months of one another. Their respective marriages and respective pregnancies ensured that the young brides’ friendship became even closer. It was, as Mary Soames describes it, ‘staunch and understanding’ (Clementine Churchill, London, 1979 , p. 162). Indeed, Soames details the very qualities that Lavery found in Goonie Churchill, as her repeated visits to his studio continued. ‘Cultivated and well-read’ and with a ‘puckish sense of humour’, she radiated ‘a sense of enchantment’ that did not essentially depend on conventional ‘beauty or dramatic colouring’ (ibid., 1979, p. 62). Nevertheless, she was, as Lady Cynthia Asquith later attested, ‘very fascinating ... [and] she is the most marvellous peg for clothes. Everything looks superlatively chic on her – things that might appear dowdy on others’ (Lady Cynthia Asquith, Diaries, 1915-1918, London, 1968, p. 128, entry for 31 January 1916). Four years before these notes were written, the painter captured the natural hauteur for which Goonie was renowned, in a full-length portrait shown at the Royal Academy in 1913. At the outbreak of war, Goonie and Clemmie and their respective children were on holiday in Norfolk together, while sharing the house on Cromwell Road. As the disaster in the Dardanelles unfolded, the women would ‘sit quietly in Lavery’s studio while he painted’ (Soames, op. cit, p. 163), and it was Goonie who encouraged her brother-in-law to paint. Winston, out of office early in 1915, also became a visitor at Cromwell Place studio, for the lessons that led to his most important ‘pastime’ (Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime (1948); see Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, Edinburgh, 2010, p. 126). It is probable that several swift sketches such as that inscribed to the sitter were painted around this time, and it is likely that Lady Gwendeline Spencer-Churchill (see lot 54) predates William Orpen’s and Ambrose McEvoy’s celebrated portraits of Lady Gwendeline, which also make eloquent use of her ‘swan’ neck. Such striking features, coupled with undoubted intelligence brought Goonie close to the seat of power and deflected the attentions, both of the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith (Soames, op. cit., p. 90), Churchill’s secretary, Edward Marsh (Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh, A Biography, London, 1959, p. 141 et. al.) and the diplomat, Duff Cooper, then working for the Foreign Service. ‘I lunched with Lady Goonie at the Berkeley … I am certainly very near to being in love with her. She is so charming and so unexpected’, Cooper wrote in his diary on 26 April 1917 (John Julius Norwich ed., The Duff Cooper Diaries, London, 2005, p. 52). Much to the chagrin of his future wife, Lady Diana Manners, the attraction was inevitable.
Goonie continued to fascinate Lavery, even at the time of the birth of her third child, Clarissa, later Countess of Avon. In that year, she became his Lady in Brown, a portrait he sold to Hugh Stodart in January 1921. Then, in 1924, at the Grosvenor Galleries, Lavery exhibited the splendid mature Goonie as A Lady in Black – a work that was later reduced in size, removing its signature (see lot 56). Arguably the finest of all Lavery’s portraits of Lady Gwendeline, this reductive treatment of the sitter dismisses the pyrotechnics of earlier sketches in favour of simple elegance and restraint. The memory of Whistler loiters in its tonalities and its thoughtful passivity even recalls that of a Hapsburg princess, painted, of course, by Velázquez.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.
BY PROFESSOR KENNETH MCCONKEY
In the spring of 1911, the actor Martin Harvey launched a campaign to fund the construction of a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre which he hoped would be opened to mark the tercentenary of the bard’s death in 1916. Its most successful event in that first year was the Fancy Dress Ball organised by a ladies’ committee chaired by Mrs Cornwallis-West (Winston Churchill’s mother, formerly Lady Randolph Churchill), in the Royal Albert Hall on 20 June, at which Elizabethan costume was de rigueur. The event attracted the cream of Edwardian society and not unnaturally, her daughter-in-law, Lady Gwendeline Spencer Churchill, known to friends as ‘Goonie’, would assist. John Lavery’s vivid oil sketch of Lady Gwendeline in the costume of an attendant on Portia, indicates that she was suitably attired for this large, well-reported social occasion that raised £10,000 for the cause (see lot 55). Living a stone’s throw from each other, in 5 Cromwell Place and 41 Cromwell Road respectively, the Laverys and the sitter were well acquainted at this point and before Lady Gwendeline arrived at the Ball, in addition to visiting the artist’s studio, Lavery’s sitter was also photographed by Langfier, in Old Bond Street, in an image that was published the following year.
Daughter of the 7th Earl of Abingdon, Gwendeline Mary Theresa Bertie (1885-1941) married John [Jack] Strange Spencer-Churchill, Winston Churchill's brother, in 1908. Reports before the marriage indicate that Winston had designs on Gwendeline, before his younger brother won her heart (Peregrine Churchill and Julian Mitchell, Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, London, 1974, p. 227). At this point the future Prime Minister’s attentions transferred to Gwendeline’s friend, Clementine Hozier (‘Clemmie’), and the two weddings occurred within months of one another. Their respective marriages and respective pregnancies ensured that the young brides’ friendship became even closer. It was, as Mary Soames describes it, ‘staunch and understanding’ (Clementine Churchill, London, 1979 , p. 162). Indeed, Soames details the very qualities that Lavery found in Goonie Churchill, as her repeated visits to his studio continued. ‘Cultivated and well-read’ and with a ‘puckish sense of humour’, she radiated ‘a sense of enchantment’ that did not essentially depend on conventional ‘beauty or dramatic colouring’ (ibid., 1979, p. 62). Nevertheless, she was, as Lady Cynthia Asquith later attested, ‘very fascinating ... [and] she is the most marvellous peg for clothes. Everything looks superlatively chic on her – things that might appear dowdy on others’ (Lady Cynthia Asquith, Diaries, 1915-1918, London, 1968, p. 128, entry for 31 January 1916). Four years before these notes were written, the painter captured the natural hauteur for which Goonie was renowned, in a full-length portrait shown at the Royal Academy in 1913. At the outbreak of war, Goonie and Clemmie and their respective children were on holiday in Norfolk together, while sharing the house on Cromwell Road. As the disaster in the Dardanelles unfolded, the women would ‘sit quietly in Lavery’s studio while he painted’ (Soames, op. cit, p. 163), and it was Goonie who encouraged her brother-in-law to paint. Winston, out of office early in 1915, also became a visitor at Cromwell Place studio, for the lessons that led to his most important ‘pastime’ (Winston S. Churchill, Painting as a Pastime (1948); see Kenneth McConkey, John Lavery, A Painter and his World, Edinburgh, 2010, p. 126). It is probable that several swift sketches such as that inscribed to the sitter were painted around this time, and it is likely that Lady Gwendeline Spencer-Churchill (see lot 54) predates William Orpen’s and Ambrose McEvoy’s celebrated portraits of Lady Gwendeline, which also make eloquent use of her ‘swan’ neck. Such striking features, coupled with undoubted intelligence brought Goonie close to the seat of power and deflected the attentions, both of the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith (Soames, op. cit., p. 90), Churchill’s secretary, Edward Marsh (Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh, A Biography, London, 1959, p. 141 et. al.) and the diplomat, Duff Cooper, then working for the Foreign Service. ‘I lunched with Lady Goonie at the Berkeley … I am certainly very near to being in love with her. She is so charming and so unexpected’, Cooper wrote in his diary on 26 April 1917 (John Julius Norwich ed., The Duff Cooper Diaries, London, 2005, p. 52). Much to the chagrin of his future wife, Lady Diana Manners, the attraction was inevitable.
Goonie continued to fascinate Lavery, even at the time of the birth of her third child, Clarissa, later Countess of Avon. In that year, she became his Lady in Brown, a portrait he sold to Hugh Stodart in January 1921. Then, in 1924, at the Grosvenor Galleries, Lavery exhibited the splendid mature Goonie as A Lady in Black – a work that was later reduced in size, removing its signature (see lot 56). Arguably the finest of all Lavery’s portraits of Lady Gwendeline, this reductive treatment of the sitter dismisses the pyrotechnics of earlier sketches in favour of simple elegance and restraint. The memory of Whistler loiters in its tonalities and its thoughtful passivity even recalls that of a Hapsburg princess, painted, of course, by Velázquez.
We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing this catalogue entry.