2910

Portrait drawing
Monsignor Zsigmond Bubics, Bishop of Kassa 1896
Seated three-quarter length and to the left, on a high backed chair, his head turned towards the viewer, wearing clerical robes, a small shoulder cape and a zuchetto (skull cap), a pectoral cross on a chain around his neck, his right hand raised to his chin, his left hand holding the carved wooden arm of his chair.
Graphite on paper, 37 x 30 cm (14 ⅝ x 11 ⅞ in.)
Inscribed lower right: László F. / 96 Kassa

Sitters' Book I, f. 10: Sigismundus Bubics / Episcopus [on a page with one other date inscription 1899]
Sitters' Book I, f. 13: [on a page inscribed in the artist's hand: Budapest, 1899 / május 8, and apparently signed at the same time by the sitter and four others]: Gr. Szapáry Gyula / Bubics Zsigmond / Fraknói Vilmos / Lippich Elek / Hajnal Márton

Private Collection

De László painted Bishop Bubics of Kassa^[1] in 1896 [2908] and this highly finished drawing is identical in composition to that picture. The artist regularly made these drawings as gifts and inscribed them with a personal message to his sitter, see Arthur Lee [6178].

The artist completed two further portraits of the Bishop in the same year, a formal portrait for the Archbishop’s palace at Kassa [110798] and a study portrait [2913] which was dedicated and given to Dr Sándor Nyári (1861-1915), art historian, and a mutual friend of the Bishop and the artist.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [110798].

PROVENANCE:
Dorotheum, Vienna, 25 October 1994 (unsold)

LITERATURE:

•DLA140-0022, Új Idők, 19 July 1896, p. 64, ill.



Pd'O  2014