Philip Alexius de LASZLÓ (1869-1937) Portrait... - Lot 29 - Daguerre

Philip Alexius de LASZLÓ (1869-1937) Portrait of Lorna Marsali Woodroffe Lang, née Forbes-Leith (1893-1975) Oil on canvas. Signed and dated 1916 lower left. Very slight restorations. 183 x 111 cm In its Regency style gilt wood and stucco frame. Born in 1893 into a family of the Scottish high aristocracy, Lorna Marsali spent her childhood in the family castle of Fyvie in the north-east of Scotland. Eager to be of service when the war of 14 broke out, she enlisted as a volunteer nurse in a hospital in the south of England. It is during this mission, already considered a daring one by her family, that she falls in love with Captain Lang. She caused a scandal with him by eloping and marrying in London in 1916 against her family's wishes. In 1913, Lady Leith de Fyvie, Lorna Marsali's grandmother, commissioned her portrait from a family friend, the painter Philip Alexius de László, a regular portraitist of the British aristocracy and royal family. Unfortunately her husband's fickle reputation was not denied and the marriage was not a happy one. In 1933, then mother of two children, she decided to divorce and remarry in the same year with another soldier, Colonel George Prior. Passionate about race horses and horseback riding, like the women in her ranks, and unable to bear the hectic life of London where her husband had decided to settle, she retired to her Fishleigh House estate. Then, on the death of her dear husband, she moved to Thorpe Mandeville Manor, where she died in 1975. Philip Alexius de László, a famous Hungarian-born socialist portrait painter, worked at the beginning of the 20th century for the royal family and the British and European high aristocracy. He inherited the style of the impressionist painter John Singer Sargent, and was in contact with the literary and intellectual society in both England and France, where he met Marcel Proust and portrayed the Duke of Guiche and the Countess Greffulhe. His p