11463
Doctor Pál Grünbaum, later Galambos[1] 1890
Head only, looking full face to the viewer, wearing a black jacket over a white shirt with a high collar, and a black tie
Oil on panel, 48 x 31.5 cm (19 x 12 ½ in.)
Inscribed lower right: E kép mása annak, mely szívemben él [This painting is a copy of one that lives in my heart] / 1890 Laub[2]
Private Collection
At the age of eighteen de László became eligible for military service. To be entitled to serve as a cadet for one year rather than in the ranks for three years, he needed to have the educational qualifications that would have enabled him to enter university. Having left school when he was nine, he was obliged to attend evening classes, where he met and was befriended by a professor of mathematics, Márton Hajnal. As well as giving Philip special coaching, he introduced him to Dr Pál Grünbaum, a young lawyer and admirer of de László’s portrait of Hajnal’s younger sister, described as a good-looking girl of twenty-two [111465].[3] Grünbaum subsequently invited the young artist to his home in Ó-Becse to paint him and other members of his family.[4] It was thought at one time that Grünbaum was painted more than once, but to date the existence of only one portrait, the present one, has been established.[5] De László described his sitter as “a lively, fidgety [man] … small, very dark in complexion, hair and moustache.”[6]
At that time, Ó-Becse was a small thriving country town in the Bácska region of southern Hungary, a fertile and prosperous agricultural region, growing mainly wheat, maize and tobacco.[7] It is now Bečej in Serbia, in the autonomous province of Vojvodina. The second half of the 19th century brought agricultural progress, especially in crop farming. Trade craft and industry[8] developed and this resulted in the emergence of a middle class. The flourishing trade and economy led to the founding of banking institutions, and a railway was built, reaching Ó-Becse in 1889 – the year de László first visited the town. The 1890 Census showed that it had a population of almost 17,000 of whom almost a third spoke Serbian or Croatian.[9] Most of the Hungarians were Roman Catholic and the Serbs were Orthodox. There was also a prosperous Jewish middle-class community of over 600, many of whom were lawyers, doctors, industrial entrepreneurs, grain merchants. Some, like the Grünbaum family, leased agricultural land or became landowners.
The artist visited Ó-Becse over three consecutive summers in 1889-1891, during which he painted a number of Hungarian genre pictures. Among the more important ones are The First Washing Lesson (1889) [11561], Family Happiness (1890) [10818] and The Storyteller (1891) [10937]. However, it was during these summer holidays that he increasingly turned to portrait painting. He painted several members of Dr Grünbaum’s family: his parents, Fülöp Grünbaum [13696] and Rozália Grünbaum [13694]; his brother Sándor [13692] and Sándor’s wife Laura [11930], his maternal aunt, Mrs Salomon Strausz, née Mária Kriszhaber [111189] and her husband [111190]. Ó-Becse was also for him a base from which to travel to other nearby towns such as Verbász (now Vrbas in Serbia) and especially Szeged, where he obtained some lucrative commissions.[10] The portraits he painted at that time were his very first commissioned works. They provided him with an income and enabled him to save for his trips to Venice in November 1889,[11] Munich in March 1890, Paris in October 1890 and Munich again in September 1891. In his autobiographical notes, he wrote: “For each portrait I received sums varying from 50 to 100 florins.[12] I undertook these commissions mainly because I wished to make myself entirely independent, and also because I had a great desire to pursue my art studies abroad. I asked Dr. Galambos to keep the money for me and to send it to me after I had gone abroad, in small sums, as I needed it.”[13] These portraits were painted before his second, more extensive period of training in Munich. They are conventional in style, no doubt achieving a good likeness of the sitters, but often painted in dark, rather sombre colours, showing little in the way of background.[14]
Life in the Hungarian countryside had a great appeal for de László, coming as he did from the centre of the rapidly developing and busy Capital City. He was living in lodgings in the town. In his autobiographical notes he gives enthusiastic descriptions of the scenery, the peasants and their customs, the gipsy music, dancing the csárdás, the Hungarian cuisine, and the congenial people he met in the circle of the Grünbaums but also among more simple folk. Writing home to his sisters, he told them: “I am enjoying myself and my days pass very rapidly. Last night in the restaurant where I eat regularly - (I pay 21 Forint) - as a bet I ate two steaks with seven eggs, half a litre of wine, two cucumbers and two pieces of bread for dinner. You can imagine what progress my stomach has made; …. they even grow fruit on the streets. I have never eaten as many melons as I have here.”[15] “I go bathing in the Tisza every second day, as I am living by the banks of the Tisza, where a little girl is crying.”[16] Over twenty years later, he wrote in his reminiscences: “As I write, these days at Ó-Becse come alive again and I find it strange that my memory of them has not faded, although I have lived such a rich life full of experience, work and struggle. Hungarian peasant life is full of romance, passion, pride and love. In those days their customs and their clothes had not changed since the previous century, and I think little can have changed today. The people are fearless and full of chivalry; their life is wine, woman and song - and hard work too - and all their quarrels are the outcome of love affairs.”[17] De László’s romanticised view of life in rural Hungary was somewhat at odds with the reality of the developing town of Ó-Becse, but it shows the impact it had on his imagination.
Dr. Pál Grünbaum was born in Ó-Becse on 5 July 1859, one of the seven children of Fülöp Grünbaum (1818-1889), a wealthy merchant and the most prominent and influential member of the Jewish community in Ó- Becse, and his wife Rozália Kriszháber. Pál began studying law in Pest in 1880 and graduated in 1887. As a student he led a carefree life among bohemian artistic circles. Returning home to Ó-Becse he opened a legal practice in 1888. In the same year he established a newspaper, Ó-Becse és Vidéke (Ó-Becse and its Neighbourhood), which continued to be published until 1921.[18] In 1895, he joined with a partner and became head of the newly founded local bank, the District Credit Bank. He also managed a 700 acre farm. His land holding increased in 1891, when he married Erzsébet Czukor, from Szeged, who brought with her a dowry of 250 acres in the Bánát (on the opposite bank of the Tisza).[19] The couple had five children. In 1904, they Hungarianised their name to Galambos.
De László’s contact with Pál Galambos continued after his summer visits to Ó-Becse: in March 1892 he wrote to him from Munich telling him of his meeting with Lucy Guinness (his future wife) at a fancy dress ball, and his hopes of going to Dublin.[20] Soon afterwards he tried to borrow some money from Galambos to enable him to follow Lucy Guinness to Paris, but it seems his friend did not take him seriously, judging by his reply: “I cannot help you, I am afraid, as I gather that you have been wasting your money on flowers.”[21] De László was deeply hurt by this refusal: “from that time, I refused all his invitations and became estranged from him.”[22] However, his rancour did not last. When he was in England in December 1899, he wrote, in reply to a letter from Pál: “I read your letter many times and it moved me to tears. I have many happy memories of my youth in distant little Ó-Becse. How much I would like to see again my works from the past, and above all you my dear friend, and your wife and children.... it is my great desire that the firm bonds of friendship that unite us should remain alive - for I can never forget the days I spent with you.”[23] He went on to invite Pál and his wife to his forthcoming wedding in London,[24] and they met again in 1912, probably in Budapest and this time with Lucy, when Galambos and his family visited them there.[25] In 1927, Pál wrote to the artist from Ó-Becse in affectionate terms: “From our old group, I and my elder sister are the only ones remaining…I round this off by telling you that I take great pleasure every day in my László pictures which are worth a fortune, and which I managed to save with great difficulty from the destructive mob at the time of the revolution.”[26]
Pál Galambos died in Ó-Becse on 3 May 1931. When de László was informed of the news, he wrote in his diary: “Galambos Pál from Ó Becse died in his 72 - year - it brings me Home my happy days with him when 18-19-20 years old - only a very few are living of these happy days - a better world than now.”[27]
PROVENANCE:
Dr. Pál Galambos
Offered at auction at Kieselbach Gallery and Auction House, Budapest, 6 October 2017, lot 95
LITERATURE:
•Kalapis, Zoltán, Életrajzi Kalauz, Novi Sad, 2002, p. 334.
•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1939, pp. 40-2, 48, 58, 71-6, 101, 107-8.
•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien, No. 106, Ph. A. von László, Bielefeld und Leipzig, Velhaven & Klasing, 1913, pp. 4 & 18.
•Fárbás, Zoltán, Régi Arczok (Száz arckép a régi Óbecse közéletéből [Old Faces. (One hundred character sketches from the public life of Óbecse)], Sztári Becsej, 1933, pp. 23-24.
•Opinćal, Dušan, Znameniti Bečejci / Neves Óbecseiek [Distinguished Citizens of Óbecse], Bečej, 2007, pp. 28-29.
•Sandra de Laszlo (ed.), A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2004, p. 12
•DLA043-0059, letter from de László to his sisters Rosa and Szeréna, 16 August 1889
•DLA038-0092, letter from de László to Pál Galambos, 21 December 1899
•DLA030-0037, letter from Pál Galambos to de László, 25 September 1927
•László, Philip de, 1931 Diary, private collection, 18 May entry, p. 142
Pd’O 2008
[1] He Hungarianised his name to Galambos in 1904. It was not unusual from about the mid-nineteenth century, but particularly after 1867 when the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary was set up, for people in Hungary with Germanic or Jewish names to ‘Hungarianise’ their names, that is to change them formally both for nationalistic reasons and in order ‘to get on in the world.’ This custom persisted for a long time, even up until 1945.
[2] De László Hungarianised his surname in 1891 from Laub to László. As a young man, de László was using both László and Laub in signing his pictures over the period from his earliest dated work, c. 1886, until 1890. Thereafter he used László in preference to Laub. Later, in 1912, when he was ennobled by the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, he chose Lombos (leafy) as his title of nobility. Lomb (or Laub in German) is the Hungarian word for leaves or foliage, and Lombos the adjective. It would seem that thereby he was recalling the original family name, even at the height of his success, and some time after he had ceased to live in Hungary.
[3] Rutter, op. cit., p. 40
[4] Ibid.
[5] It was misleadingly referred to as a “small head” by Owen Rutter, op. cit., p. 48
[6] Rutter, op. cit., p. 71
[7] The region is the southernmost extension of the Great Hungarian Plain, with a flat landscape. Ó-Becse lies on the right bank of the river Tisza.
[8] The main industries were flour milling, brewery and brick manufacturing.
[9] The Hungarian census system at that time was based on native language. There was also a small minority of 415 German speakers. Out of the whole population of Ó-Becse, almost 10,700 were ethnic Hungarians and 5,900 ethnic Serbs.
[10] For example, from Dr. Ignácz Milkó [111178] in Ó-Becse and members of his family living in Szeged. Dr. Milkó was a friend of Dr. Galambos and as well as being a doctor, he became a partner with Dr. Galambos in a bank in Ó-Becse
[11] In Venice he was welcomed by Mór Than (1828-1899), the important history and fresco painter, who was a native of Ó-Becse (See Rutter, op. cit., pp. 46-47)
[12] ₤5 - ₤10
[13] Rutter, op cit., p. 40
[14] An exception is the portrait of Mrs. Sándor Grünbaum, Pál’s sister in law [11930], painted in light hues
[15] DLA043 -0059, letter from de László to his sisters Rosa and Szeréna, 16 August 1889
[16] Ibid. “The little girl crying by the banks of the Tisza” is a reference to a Hungarian folk song
[17] Rutter, op. cit., pp. 73-74
[18] It was in this publication that de László had his first experience of seeing his name in print, as articles often about the artist and his activities
[19] Kalapis, Zoltán, Életrajzi Kalauz, Novi Sad, 2002, p. 334
[20] Rutter, op. cit., pp. 101-102
[21] Ibid, p. 108
[22] ibid.
[23] DLA038-0092, op. cit.
[24] The wedding actually took place at Lucy's home, in the parish church of Stillorgan, near Dublin on 7th June 1900, and Dr. Galambos and his wife did not attend
[25] A photograph showing de László, Lucy and their four elder children in his London home is dedicated on the reverse, in German: “To Dr. Pál Galambos, in memory of the pleasant hours spent with him and with his family today” and signed “László Fülöp” and “Lucy M. László”, 6 Jan. 1912 (Private Collection)
[26] DLA030-0037, letter from Dr. Pál Galambos to de László, 25 September 1927. He is probably referring to the disturbances during the communist regime of Béla Kun in 1919
[27] László, Philip de, 1931 Diary, 18 May entry, p.142