Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson (1892-1962)

Philip Alexius de László de Lombos (Budapest 1869 – London 1937). Oil painting on canvas, Victoria (Vita) Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson (1892-1962) by Philip Alexius de László de Lombos (Budapest 1869 – London 1937), signed, top right: P.A. Laszlo 1910 III. A half-length portrait seated, wearing black gown, white ruffled blouse, red beads and broad-brimmed hat. Photograph of the artist pasted on reverse. László, having married Lucy Madeleine Guinness in 1900, settled in London in 1907, preparing his arrival with an exhibition at the Fine Art Society, and being immediately rewarded with commissions to paint Edward VII, Queen Alexandra, and Princess Victoria. Lady Sackville was thus, characteristically, in the vanguard of fashion, in commissioning this portrait of her daughter – which the latter came to hate, and relegated to the attic – from him (Vita presumably much preferred the portrait by Clare Atwood, now at Smallhythe [NT], of her dressed for the 1910 fancy dress ball at Knole in the scarlet Venetian legal robes that Ellen Terry had worn as Portia in The Merchant of Venice). Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent (Accredited Museum)