Portrait of Lady
Meux is a name given to several full-length portraits by James Abbott
McNeill Whistler. Valerie Susan Meux, née Langdon, (1847 – 1910)
was a Victorian socialite and the wife of the London brewer, Sir
Henry Meux (pronounced "Mews"). She claimed to have been an
actress, but was apparently on the stage for only a single season.
She is believed to have met Sir Henry at the Casino de Venise in
Holburn, where she worked as a banjo-playing barmaid and prostitute
under the name Val Reece.
James Abbott McNeill
Whistler was an American expatriate and one of the most accomplished
portraitists of his time. However, the artist had become bankrupt in
1879, following his lawsuit against the critic John Ruskin.
In 1881, Lady Meux
offered Whistler his first significant commission after the
bankruptcy. Her full-length portrait, known as Arrangement in Black,
No. 5 (Portrait of Lady Meux) now hangs in the Honolulu Museum of
Art. It shows her dressed in black with a long white fur coat,
diamond tiara, diamond necklace, and diamond bracelet. Reportedly,
the painting was commended by Edward VII of the United Kingdom (then
Prince of Wales) and Princess Alexandra, when they saw it in the
artist’s studio. The painting was also exhibited in the 1882 Paris
Salon, where it was enthusiastically received.
Whistler painted a
second portrait of Lady Meux in 1881 called Harmony in Pink and Grey
(Portrait of Lady Meux) which belongs to the Frick Collection in New
York City. This full-length portrait shows the subject on stage
standing before a pinkish-grey curtain, in an obvious allusion to her
alleged stage career. She wears a light grey dress trimmed in pink
satin. The butterfly emblem that Whistler used as a signature is on
the right side of the painting a little below the middle. Whistler
assigned many of his paintings titles with terms like “arrangement”
and “harmony”, which may be interpreted as either musical or
abstract.
A third painting
known as Portrait of Lady Meux in Furs was also commenced in 1881.
This canvas was probably destroyed by the artist in a dispute with
the sitter, however a photograph of it exists in the Whistler
Archives, University of Glasgow, Scotland. Both the Honolulu painting
and the destroyed painting belong to a series of “black portraits”,
paintings Whistler executed at various stages of his career in a
palette dominated by black.
Valerie Susan, Lady
Meux, (1847 – 1910) was a Victorian socialite and the wife of Sir
Henry Meux, 3rd Baronet (1856 - 1900), a London brewer.
James Abbott McNeill
Whistler painted three portraits of Lady Meux in 1881. The portraits
were the first full-scale commissions to be given to Whistler
following the notorious Ruskin trial, which had left him financially
bankrupt. Harmony in Pink and Grey: Portrait of Lady Meux currently
belongs to the Frick Collection in New York City, Arrangement in
Black: Lady Meux belongs to the Honolulu Museum of Art while the
third portrait, Portrait of Lady Meux in Furs, is believed to have
been destroyed by Whistler after he became outraged over a comment
made to him by Lady Meux during a sitting.
Never accepted by
her husband's family or by polite society, she was a flamboyant and
controversial figure, who was given to driving herself around London
in a high phaeton, drawn by a pair of zebras. Their house at
Theobalds in Hertfordshire was lavishly improved and enlarged;
additions included a swimming pool and an indoor roller skating rink.
In 1887, at Lady Meux's request, the dismantled Temple Bar was
purchased from the City of London Corporation, transported to
Hertfordshire and carefully rebuilt as a new gateway to the estate.
She often entertained in the upper chamber of the gateway. Guests
included the Prince of Wales and Winston Churchill. Sir Henry died in
1900, without issue, ten years before she would die.
Lady Meux also owned
a string of race horses, racing them under the assumed name of Mr.
Theobolds. As an owner she was not greatly successful, but she won
the Sussex Stakes with Ardeshir in 1897. She was also a noted
collector of ancient Egyptian artifacts; the legendary Egyptologist
Wallis Budge, published a catalogue of more than 1,700 of her items
including 800 scarabs and amulets. He dedicated his publication, The
Book of Paradise, to her. She tried to leave the collection to the
British Museum, but the trustees declined the bequest and it was
sold. She also acquired five illustrated Ethiopic manuscripts, and
Budge published a colored facsimile of them. On finding that they
were revered by the Ethiopians, she left them in her will to Emperor
Menelik. The courts set aside this provision, ostensibly, to keep
them in Britain - and they were sold to William Randolph Hearst, of
California.
During the Second
Boer War, the early British reverses had made headline news and the
defence of Ladysmith had made a particular impression on Lady Meux.
On hearing of the landing of naval guns for the Battle of
Ladysmith,[8] she had ordered, at her own expense, six naval
12-pounders on special field carriages made by Armstrong of Elswick.
The guns were sent directly to Lord Roberts in South Africa, because
they had been refused by the War Office. They were known as the
"Elswick Battery", and were manned by the 101st
(Northumbrian) Regiment Royal Artillery (Volunteers). The battery was
in action several times, including the Second Battle of Silkaatsnek.
Sir Hedworth Lambton
A caricature of
Captain Hedworth Lambton published in Vanity Fair, 1900.
When Sir Hedworth
Lambton, the commander of the Naval Brigade at Ladysmith, returned to
England, he called on Lady Meux at Theobalds to thank her for her
gift and recount his adventures. She was so taken with him that she
made him the chief beneficiary of her will, on condition that he
change his surname to Meux (she was without direct heirs). When she
died on 20 December 1910, he willingly changed his name by Royal
Warrant, and inherited the Hertfordshire estate and a substantial
interest in the Meux Brewery.
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