More than a painter of Queens

The last words of Hungarian-born portraitist Philip de László, spoken to his nurse, were apparently, ‘It is a pity, because there is so much still to do.’ As Duff Hart-Davis’s biography amply demonstrates, for de László, art — which he regarded as ‘work’ as much as an aesthetic vocation — was both the purpose and the substance of his life.

The last words of Hungarian-born portraitist Philip de László, spoken to his nurse, were apparently, ‘It is a pity, because there is so much still to do.’ As Duff Hart-Davis’s biography amply demonstrates, for de László, art — which he regarded as ‘work’ as much as an aesthetic vocation — was both the purpose and the substance of his life. De László himself estimated that he completed 2,700 full-scale portraits in oils over the course of a fifty-year career. Researchers busy on the artist’s catalogue raisonné assert a higher figure. De László’s was undoubtedly a busy life. Whether it was also in the broader sense a full life remains largely unanswered in the present account.

Certainly de László took no account of modern hangups over work/life balance. He was a determined and ambitious man, appealingly free of self-congratulation but relentlessly focused on the next ‘big thing’, be that a commission from the King of England or the President of the United States (both boxes were ultimately ticked: in the latter case he painted not one but three US presidents). Although he paid lip service to the idea of undertaking a grand history or genre subject, which he hoped would raise his reputation to a higher plane, for the most part he was free of any anxiety that portraiture was a facile undertaking, trading in flattery and worldliness. ‘The longing to do daily better keeps one in constant enthusiasm,’ he wrote to Princess Helen of Greece.