Bernard Shaw
Léon de Smet (Ghent 1881 – Deurle 1966)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1915 (signed and dated)
Materials
Black and brown crayon on yellow paper
Measurements
749 x 546 mm (29 1/2 x 21 1/2 in)
Order this imageCollection
Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire
NT 1274653
Summary
Black crayon drawing of Bernard Shaw by Léon de Smet (Ghent 1881 – Deurle 1966). A half-length portrait of Shaw, seated and wearing a buttoned jacket with a shirt and tie. Signed and dated bottom right “LEON DE SMET/ 1915 (in circle)”.
Full description
Black crayon drawing of Bernard Shaw by Léon de Smet (Ghent 1881 – Deurle 1966). A half-length portrait of Shaw, seated and wearing a buttoned jacket with a shirt and tie. Signed and dated bottom right “LEON DE SMET/ 1915 (in circle)”. Labels verso for National Trust Loan to National Portrait Gallery exhibition in London, 1992. Leon De Smet was a Belgian refugee who came to London during the First World War and became acquainted with Shaw through his friends the writer John Galsworthy, and the wealthy arts patron Madame Lalla Vandervelde (the wife of the Belgian Socialist leader) who appeared in Shaw’s playlet Augustus Does His Bit. With typical generosity Shaw acted as one of De Smet’s patrons, offering advice on possible exhibition venues and financial assistance. Over the years the Shaws purchased many of his oil paintings, and one survives in the collection Still Life with an Image of the Madonna in a Glass Case (1923). Shaw sat for this portrait in 1915. The resulting crayon drawing by De Smet was much admired by Shaw. He later remarked in Sixteen Self Sketches (1949): “De Smet’s portrait is that of a quiet delicate elderly gentleman: Shaw likes its resemblance to his father”. Shaw arranged for the portrait to be published in Colour magazine in November 1915 to promote De Smet’s work. The picture was always kept at Ayot, unlike most of the other portraits and sculpture which were displayed in the London flats. Shaw notes in his diary for 1917 (written at Shaw’s Corner): “Wrote to De Smet, the Belgian painter, about getting his portrait of me, which hangs down here, up to town to his exhibition at the Leicester Gallery”. Here Shaw refers to De Smet’s first solo exhibition in London. (Alice McEwan, 2020)
Provenance
The Shaw Collection. The house and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust by George Bernard Shaw in 1950, together with Shaw's photographic archive.
Credit line
Shaw’s Corner, The George Bernard Shaw Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Signed bottom right "LEON DE SMET/ 1915(in circle)" Labels on back for National Trust Loan to National Portrait Gallery exhibition
Makers and roles
Léon de Smet (Ghent 1881 – Deurle 1966)