said about the bust. Astor did congratulate Davidson on his exhibition at Knoedler’s in New York and hoped that this would encourage further commissions, although she didn’t offer to find sitters for him. Astor’s only other documented intervention to introduce Davidson to a potential sitter was the invitation that she extended to Henry Ford and the artist to dine at 4 St James Square on the same occasion. Davidson recalled that while looking with Ford at the prints of the Shaw bust, conversation turned to art: ‘Ford argued that nothing static was beautiful, only things in movement were beautiful. As he said this, he moved his hand through space. It was a beautiful hand.’23

How Astor came to view the bust over time is not recorded in Davidson’s file. She had two casts, one of which was on display at Cliveden at one point in the Library, but not in the Great Hall, where she had placed Sargent’s 1908 portrait. Davidson’s career continued to flourish and he sculpted a range of 20th-century luminaries, such as Mahatma Gandhi, William Randolph Hearst, James Joyce, and Franklin D. Roosevelt (a cast of whose bust is at Chartwell). He also produced a portrait of the popular American singer Frank Sinatra, and the poet Walt Whitman.

Astor’s patronage was made possible by her wealth and social position. Astor had no interest in pushing the boundaries of artistic expression in portraiture at that time. Davidson was a safe choice for a piece that was intended for her private space at Cliveden. Astor was an active participant in the creative process, vigorously expressing her view of Davidson’s work in the case of his busts of Shaw and of herself. As patron and artist, the two were well matched: both were energetic, passionate and highly sociable. The fact that Astor did not like the Davidson portrait of her is very clear and she let him know it.

Davidson himself was attracted by Astor’s fame. His style was not to over-soften the features of his female sitters. In 1920, the American edition of Vogue had run a feature entitled ‘Women of the Social World as Seen by the Sculptor’ that showed the work of contemporary sculptors. It mainly featured the work of those who had produced portrait heads of wealthy female socialites.24 Works by the sculptors Elie Nadelman and Eleanor Mortimer were praised for their ‘sensitive modelling’ and ‘fine simplicity’. However, Davidson’s portrait of Mary Cass Canfield was viewed as a ‘bold and unusual treatment’. As with his bust of Astor, the sitter looks at the viewer square on with a direct gaze, uncompromising and strong. Davidson’s style of sculpting women in a head-on pose was well established by 1930 and his fame as a celebrity portraitist was assured. The fact that he was mentioned in 20 articles in Vanity Fair between 1914 and 1928 testifies to this. It is unlikely that Astor would have been unaware of Davidson’s style. Her negative reaction to the bronze was largely a sign that she didn’t see herself in the portrait that Davidson had produced. Patronage in portraiture is an expression of self, an opportunity to ‘negotiate moments of self-definition’.25 Astor simply did not fully identify with this image of her.

Although she commented rather abrasively on the portrait, some of her disappointment might be attributed to a problem that Davidson had raised himself in making the bronze – namely, trying to capture a good likeness in the eyes. Contemporary and later photographs of Astor show that even in old age, she had a light and vitality in her eyes that was perhaps di cult to convey in bronze. Astor was familiar with lively images of herself, captured in fluid brush strokes and velvety charcoal lines and through the camera lens. Perhaps she did not anticipate how different a portrait in bronze would be compared to more animated forms of representation. Yet, in fairness, Davidson’s portrait of Astor is not only a convincing likeness of her in 1930, but a perceptive comment on the woman who held a unique place in British society at that time.

FIG 4 Nancy Witcher Langhorne, Viscountess Astor CH, MP (1879–1964), 1930, Joseph Davidson, bronze with marble socle (not shown), 46 x 19 x 29cm (with socle), Cliveden Estate, Buckinghamshire Photo: © National Trust Images/Christopher Warleigh-Lack

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Oonagh Kennedy is the National Trust’s Curator at Cliveden.

1. B. Fortune, ‘Davidson, Jo (1883–1952), sculptor’, American National Biography online edition [Accessed 2 February 2018] http:// www.anb.org/view/10.1093/ anb/9780198606697.001.0001/ anb9780198606697–e-1700206]. 2. Ibid. 3. J.F. Kienitz, ‘Jo Davidson’, The Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol. 1, no. 3 (March 1948), p. 268. 4. J. Davidson, Between Sittings: An Informal Autobiography of Jo Davidson, New York, 1951, p . 253.

5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Library of Congress, Washington, Manuscript Division, Jo Davidson Papers, Box 11. 8. Ibid 9. Ibid. 10. Davidson, op. cit., pp. 86–87. 11. Ibid, p. 254. 12. Ibid. 13. Library of Congress, Washington, Manuscript Division, Jo Davidson Papers, Box 11. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid.

16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Davidson, op. cit., p. 255. 24. Vogue, New York, vol. 56, no. 10 (1 November 1920), p. 70. 25. Cynthia Lawrence (ed.), Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors, and Connoisseurs, Pennsylvania, 1997, p. 17.