This portrait was painted in London in 1932. During his fifth and last visit to the United States in late 1933 and early 1934 de László recorded in his diary that he dined with the sitter and her husband and saw the portrait in their home. He also mentioned that he 'corrected Mrs. Hoffman’s portrait,' something he rarely did once he had completed and signed a portrait.
Katherine Chace Miller was born 7 March 1894, the daughter of Dr George Norton Miller (1857-1935) and Martha Le Roy Glover (1864-1941). Her parents were art connoisseurs who acquired works by many significant American artists such as Childe Hassam. Their city residence at 811 Madison Avenue, New York city, and their country estate in Rhinebeck, New York held many fine ancestral family portraits painted by Thomas Sully and Gilbert Stuart. She joined the American Red Cross as a nurse after the death of her brother, U.S. Army Lt. George Norton Miller III, during the First World War. Towards the end of the war she was stationed in Southampton, England.
On 6 March 1922 she married William Wickham Hoffman (1880-1966), son of Mr and Mrs Francis Burrall Hoffman, who after the First World War, served as military attaché at the American legation in Brussels. Katharine Hoffman was an amateur artist and painted throughout her life, primarily landscapes and interiors of her houses. During her travels to Europe she acquired works of art and built a small but important collection of French Impressionists and American Realist painters, particularly George Bellows. She was widowed in 1966 and devoted herself to philanthropy until her death in 1977 at her Carlyle House residence.
We are grateful to Katherine Field for writing the catalogue entry for this portrait, which will be included in the Philip de László catalogue raisonné, currently presented in progress online: www.delaszlocatalogueraisonne.com