5022

Lajos Ernst 1907

Head and shoulders, turned slightly to the left, facing the viewer, wearing a dark jacket and a white shirt, all against a yellow-brownish background

Oil on board, 63 x 43.5 cm (24 ⅝ x 17 ⅛ in.)

Inscribed lower right: Ernst Lajosnak / baráti tisztelettel / Colectiv Kiállításunknak / emlékéül / László F.E. Bécs 1907 ^[1]   

Sitters’ Book I, f. 67: Ernst Lajos

Magyar Nemzeti Galéria (Hungarian National Gallery), Budapest, currently on loan to the Ernst Museum

Inv. no. 55.1

Lajos Ernst was a founding member of the Nemzeti Szalon (National Salon, Budapest) in 1894, and was appointed its director from 1901 until 1909, when a scandal led to his removal. During this period he added to the regular exhibition retrospectives of major 19th century and contemporary Hungarian painters, as well as exhibitions of the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. The exhibition referred to in the inscription on the present study, painted in Vienna, may be the important de László retrospective held at the Nemzeti Szalon in April 1907, shortly before the artist’s departure from Vienna to London.^[2] Ernst had certainly known de László since 1904, the year in which he signed the artist’s Sitters’ Book and his portrait is typical of so many painted (and given) in friendship by the artist.

In 1909 Ernst took initial steps to establish an independent museum in Budapest, and three years later, in May 1912 the Ernst Museum opened at no. 8 Nagymező Street with a survey of the work of Pál Szinyei-Merse,^[3] and the display of Ernst’s private collection across fourteen rooms. Over the following years, the Museum became a major Budapest cultural centre and, despite his ejection from the National Salon, Ernst remained an important and respected figure in artistic life.

Ernst began holding art auctions in 1917 (with the assistance, amongst others, of de László’s old friend Gábor de Térey [11881], then Director of the Old Gallery of the Fine Arts Museum). The auctions continued after the war but the economic situation and Ernst’s own relentless purchasing forced him into debt. By 1932 the Ernst Museum building had been sold, and Ernst had begun negotiations with the state to sell his collection. Nothing had come of these negotiations by 1937, and in April of that year he drowned himself in the Danube.

Lajos Ernst was born in 1872, the son of a wealthy Jewish property developer of Budapest, Mór Ernst, and his wife, Róza, née Steiner. He began collecting at the age of fifteen and by the turn of the century had already amassed an important collection of Hungarian works of art covering all periods.

In 1901 Ernst had married Elza Ekler, with whom he had three sons, Endre ‘Bandi’, Mihály and Gábor. Endre ran the Ernst Museum after his father’s death, until the collection was auctioned off in 1939. He continued to act as an advisor to the Museum until 1942.^[4] The Ernst Museum was nationalized in 1948, after which it became a furniture warehouse. It was re-established as a museum space in 1953, and remains so to this day.

PROVENANCE:        

Gábor Ernst;

Acquired by the Hungarian National Gallery in 1951

EXHIBITED:        

•National Salon (Nemzeti Szalon), Budapest, Exhibition of works by László Fülöp, 1907

LITERATURE:        

•Sághy, Ildikó, ed., The Ernst Museum, Budapest, 2002, ill. on back cover

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 99, ill.

•DLA149-0012, letter from de László to Lajos Ernst, 2 April 1907

•DLA149-0013, letter from de László to Lajos Ernst, 6 April 1907

•DLA149-0014, letter from de László to Lajos Ernst, 4 May 1907

CWS 2004