2817

Frau Carl Valentin, née Paula Laub 1923

Head-and-shoulders in profile to the left, head turned and looking to the viewer three-quarter face, wearing a white blouse or wrap, a gold necklace just indicated

Oil on canvas, 51.5 x 41 cm (20 ¼ x 16 ⅛ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / LONDON 1923 Xmas 

Laib L14409 (433) / C 18 (18A): The artist’s sister

Sitters’ Book II, f. 38: Pauline Valentin / 28 XII 23.

Private Collection

Paula Laub, later Frau Carl Valentin, the artist’s youngest sister, known as Pauline, was the fifth of the six surviving children of Adolf and Johanna Laub. She was born in Budapest on 30 March 1874.

The artist was introduced to Wilhelm Valentin and his family by his teacher in Munich, Professor Liezenmayer [4787], in 1891. The Valentins were Bavarian and the young artist was welcomed into their interesting and kindly household, at first as a paying guest.^[1] They were very supportive and took a great interest in the young man’s emerging career as a painter. Paula probably first met the Valentin family while visiting her brother in Munich. She married Herr Valentin’s son Carl, in Budapest on 11 June 1896. Carl Valentin was the son of Herr Valentin’s first wife, Maria Schussmann, an American. Carl and Pauline signed the Sitters’ Book on the 10 June 1899 in Rauden.  

With financial help from his father, Carl Valentin established a large piano dealership in Munich at Theresienstrasse 10-12. He was By Appointment supplier of pianos to the Royal Court of Bavaria, and to His Holiness Pope Pius X (reigned 1903-1914). By 1913 the firm had some 300 pianos in stock, but that summer Carl Valentin ran into financial difficulties and he asked his brother-in-law, the artist, for a loan of 5000 Marks. In his letter requesting help, Carl Valentin wrote: “In June this year it was 17 years that I have been married to your dear sister. We have had to suffer and endure everything together..... For 17 years my family have had almost uninterrupted ill health; if not Pauline then it was the rather weak boys who were ill. The doctors’ bills consumed most of my income. You know that I have never indulged myself in luxury or led an opulent life..... My dear wife is modest and thrifty, and works and sews everything for the children; she wears a single dress and a hat for the whole year, as you yourself noticed, and she runs the household with one servant girl, although you yourself during your stay here were amazed at this and you wrote to me that we should take on a second servant and that you would help us with this.”^[2] It is not known whether de László granted the loan.

Pauline had difficulty in adjusting herself to life in Munich. After her return from a 12-week holiday to Budapest and Abbazia in 1913, her husband wrote to de László: “Little Pauline is Hungarian through and through and likes above all to go back to her homeland. If one wants to make her really happy, one must send her to Pest, although it is not the best place from the point of view of her health. After the pleasures of Pest she has to some extent come down to earth and sometimes she cannot believe that she is back in Munich and she does not quite know where she is. When she has these illusions and struggles with these Hungarian quirks within herself, I send her to visit our Munich relations, and then she immediately becomes aware that she is no longer in Pest or Abbazia, but well and truly back in Munich.”^[3] Even in 1924, a few weeks before her death, Pauline herself on her return from a visit to Florence described Munich as, “this sad and unfriendly land, where always only bad things happen.”^[4] 

Pauline was artistic and had a fine singing voice. In later life she regretted that she had not trained as an opera singer. Her husband too was musical, and their younger son Willy became a violinist. The family gave concerts at home. Fritz, the elder son, trained as a doctor and lived in Munich. In later life, her two sons became alienated from Pauline. She seems to have disapproved of their mode of life and their women friends. Some months before her death she wrote to the artist: “From my boys I have no news…they have to realise their mistakes themselves, they are old enough; if they prefer money and frivolous women then that is their affair – I have in every way conscientiously fulfilled my parental duties, for which God is my witness.”^[5] After her death, her brother Marczi advised the artist not to have any dealings with his two nephews.

A vein of sadness runs through Pauline’s life. She felt herself to be the Cinderella of her family and that she had received less affection from the artist than her two older sisters, Róza and Szeréna.^[6] Her letters reflect a gentle, naïve, rather sentimental and conscientious personality prone to feelings of sadness and loneliness. She was very fond of the artist’s children, particularly Henry. She did charitable work in Munich with children from a school for the blind, reserving her Sunday afternoons to take the children for walks. She suffered from chronic ill-health and died at a relatively early age, quite unexpectedly.

De László’s biographer, Owen Rutter, recorded the artist’s feelings about his sister: “He [de László] had to hurry back from Rome for another exhibition of his work at the French Gallery, but he had only been in London a few days when he received news that his youngest sister Pauline was ill in Munich. He felt no reason to be apprehensive, and it was difficult for him to go to her, for besides preparations for the exhibition he had invited the Duke of Guiche to stay. Pauline’s illness developed seriously, however, and she died on 22 July. Henry went to her from Zurich and Marczi from Budapest, and de László hastened from London, but arrived too late for the funeral. She had an unhappy life, for her marriage to Carl Valentin had not been fortunate, and de László wrote in his diary: “A tragic life has closed. I meant it better when I took her with me to Munich over thirty years ago.”^[7]

The present portrait was painted in London in December 1923, when Pauline was visiting the artist and his family. It was framed in Munich by the firm of Dury; Pauline herself selected the frame.

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 79-80

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 61

•DLA044-0008, letter  from Carl Valentin to de László, 20 June 1913

•DLA044-0010, letter from Pauline Valentin to de László, 24 June 1913

•DLA044-0006, letter from Carl Valentin to de László, 12 July 1913

•DLA015-0016, letter from Pauline Valentin to de László, 22 January 1924

•DLA015-0029, letter from Pauline Valentin to de László, 9 February 1924

•DLA015-0028, letter from Pauline Valentin to de László, 29 February 1924

•DLA116-0038, letter from Pauline Valentin to de László, 10 June 1924

Pd’O 2008