13541

Baroness Otto von Schleinitz, née Clara Loth 1911

Bust length in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a black dress with a high collar edged with white, drop pearl earrings and decorations of the Prussian Red Cross

Oil on canvas, 61 x 48 cm (24 x 18 ¾ in.) oval

Inscribed verso: dem verehrten Autor / meiner Künstlerbiographie [to the esteemed author of my monograph] / Baron von Schleinitz, / London 1911 nov. / P.A. László

NPG Album 1903-14, p. 40

NPG Album 1912-1916, p. 21

Private Collection

De László presented this portrait to the sitter’s husband, Baron Otto von Schleinitz [13701], as a token of thanks for his work on a monograph about the artist.^[1] It was included in the volume and described by the author as “in every respect [an] outstandingly successful portrait.”^[2] He explains that the sitter is wearing “the Women’s Service Cross, the Empress Augusta Gold Medal, and the 1870-1871 Campaign Medal [Franco-Prussian War], all decorations awarded in recognition of her services rendered as superintendent of a field hospital.”^[3]

The picture pleased the couple so much that on its receipt the Baron wrote to the artist: “Old as we are, we danced round the picture and gave three 'hochs', and then three cheers for the Master and his dear wife.”^[4] 

The illustration in Schleinitz’s monograph shows the portrait as having been originally rectangular in shape, with the artist's signature and inscription in the bottom right hand corner. The picture has since been re-framed as an oval and the original signature and inscription have been preserved on the verso. At Christmas 1913 de László made a head study of the Baron [13701] as a pendant to the present portrait.

Clara Loth was born in Berlin 9 November 1834. Following the death of her first husband, Heinrich Fischer,^[5] she married on 23 July 1872, in Berlin, the antiquarian and bibliophile, Baron Otto von Schleinitz (1839-1916). There were no children of the marriage. They moved to London around 1900 and lived with a niece, Emilie Schönfeld, at 7 Redcliffe Road, South Kensington.

The sitter died in Kensington in December 1919.

EXHIBITED:          

•Colnaghi and The Clarendon Gallery, London, Society Portraits 1850 - 1939, 1985, no. 77

LITERATURE:          

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, no. 106, Ph. A. Von László, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, ill. p. 127, pl. 144

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 274

•Newall, Christopher, Society Portraits 1850 - 1939, Colnaghi and The Clarendon Gallery, 30 October-14 December, 1985, no. 77, ill. p. 171

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 128

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 226

CWS 2017