This portrait of the socialite Vicomtesse Phyllis de Janzé (née Boyd) was painted in 1926 and shows Ambrose McEvoy at the height of his artistic powers. Glancing away from the viewer with bare shoulders and her hand on her hip, Phyllis exudes indomitable social confidence, befitting her allegedly scant regard for social conformity.

McEvoy excelled when painting the great, the good, and the glamourous and had a penchant for rebellious young women whose defiance he could ineffably translate onto canvas. Phyllis was one such woman. Her name features prominently in diaries from the period which comment on her fondness for fashion and her daring disregard for the entrenched elite structures which dictated the lives of so many women at this date. Barbara Cartland described her in the zenith of her youth in the late 1920s:

Also dancing [at the Embassy Club] is the Vicomtesse Henri de Janzé – the great-grandaughter of the beautiful Mrs. Jordan and William IV. She was one of the first women to wear the very short skirt, and she has a mysterious, haunting beauty, with high cheekbones and pale aquamarine eyes. She is always in love, always surrounded by passionate, ardent lovers. She has a violent temper, when her language becomes Hogarthian and her actions dangerous to those who have annoyed her.[1]

Phyllis’s grandfather was the illegitimate son of King William IV and the famous actress Dorethea Jordan, and in 1922 she married Vicomte Henri de Janzé, the scion of a cosmopolitan, Normandy-based noble family. Her relationship with Henri quickly withered and over the following decade, Phyllis became romantically involved with several prominent society figures including John Spencer-Churchill, 11th Duke of Marlborough, Ivor Guest, 1st Viscount Wimborne and Walter Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne. Her fast-paced approach to love and life was delicately balanced, however, by her erudition and wit, and Phyllis was described by one commentator as ‘…a lady to the fingertips’ with ‘many excellent, loyal and highly placed female friends including the wives of all her lovers.’[2]

When this work was painted McEvoy was considered one of the leading society portrait painters of his day, and his roster of patrons included some of the most fashionable men and women of the period. In the same year the present work was undertaken, McEvoy painted portraits of the American actress Tallulah Bankhead, Lady Patricia Ramsay – granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Lady Diana Abdy, and Gladys Cooper. The latter is one of McEvoy’s most daring bust-length portraits and shares many stylistic affinities with the present work in its loose handling and almost abstract depiction of costume. McEvoy’s audacious style of painting, characterised by broad, rapid brushstrokes and bold splashes of intense colour was famed within his lifetime and reached its climax in the year this work was painted. Tragically, however, this portrait would prove to be his swan song and in January 1927 McEvoy died of pneumonia aged just 49.

Considered a masterpiece within his lifetime, this work was acquired soon after McEvoy’s death by the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh to bolster their collection of contemporary British art. Its acquisition was announced on the front pages of two Pittsburgh newspapers - a fitting homage to an artist who had dominated society portraiture on both sides of the Atlantic. A replica of this portrait was painted by McEvoy in the same year as the present work and was gifted to Phyllis by McEvoy’s wife following the artist’s death.

Unseen and undocumented since it was deaccessioned in 1960, this portrait is an exciting re-discovery and serves as a crucial bookend to the life and career of one of Britain’s most original and talented society portrait painters.

[1] Cartland, B. 1970. We Danced All Night. London: Hutchinson, p.245. Quoted in Akers-Douglas, E & Hendra, L. (London, 2019), Divine People: The Art and Life of Ambrose McEvoy, p. 244.

[2] Channon, H, ed. Simon Heffer. 2012. Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1): 1918-38. London: Random House, p. 456.