Philip Alexius de Laszlo's Portrait of a Lady

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Mrs. Charles Alexander Munn
(nee Mary Astor Paul)
(Image shows what is assumed to be a B/W print of some type after the portrait) Philip Alexius de Laszlo -- British painter (1869-1937)
1929

Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Oil on canvas
42 x 33 ½ in.
signed and dated l.r. de Laszlo / PARIS / 1929.
Donated to the Drexel Museumby the Mrs. Munn’s second husband, Jacques Allez.

Jpg: susan higley

From: Matt Davies
Matt Davies @JSSGallery.org
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005

The sitter is Mrs. Charles Alexander Munn. She was born Mary Astor Paul in 1889, the daughter of James William Paul, Jr., and Frances Drexel, whose family home, Woodcrest, was in Radnor, Pennsylvania. She married Charles Alexander Munn of New York and Paris; they had four children, one of whom, Pauline, was painted by de Laszlo in Paris in 1929 as well. Another daughter, Mary, later became Lady Bessborough. (De Laszlo had painted Mrs. Munn’s brother, Anthony J. Drexel Paul, and his wife Isabel Biddle Paul, in 1922.) The Munns were actually divorcing around the time the portrait was painted; she later remarried Jacques Allez. She died in 1950 in Paris.

Mrs. Munn signed de Laszlo's Sitters Book, Vol. II p. 64 "Mary Paul Munn Paris 1929."

Notes
Special thanks to Susan Higley for sending the image and Matt Davies, a friend of the JSS Gallery, for explaining who it was.

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