111155

Study portrait

Prince Franz von Ratibor 1899

Head and shoulders to the left, with a monocle over his right eye, wearing a wing collar with a blue tie, a brown jacket or coat just indicated, with the collar turned up

Oil on board 49.5 x 43 cm (19 ½ x 17 in.) [possibly cut down top and bottom]

Inscribed lower right: Sr. Durchl. Prinzen Franz v. R / in Verehrung / László FE / 99. I  [To his Highness Prince Franz v. R / with esteem]

Sitters’ Book I, f. 18: Franz P Ratibor / Berlin 18 Juni 99.

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 48: Franz P. Ratibor [among signatures dated 1900]

Sitters’ Book I, f. 49: Franz P. Ratibor Budapest / 11.11.1…

Private Collection

According to de László’s first biographer, Owen Rutter, the artist had already painted a portrait of Franz and his wife^[1] at the Ratibors’ home, Schloss Rauden in Silesia (now Rudy, Poland), early in 1898, both of which remain untraced.^[2]  At the same time, he painted the formal portrait of the present sitter’s elder brother Viktor II, Duke of Ratibor [7478], now at Schloss Corvey, another of the Ratibor residences.

The present head study was painted in January 1899 at Rauden where de László was spending Christmas and the New Year with the Ratibors. At this time he probably completed his large portrait of the Duchess of Ratibor [110797] (Schloss Corvey), as well as a head study of Princess Egon Ratibor, née Lobkowicz [9050]^[3] and a sketch of Baroness Margarethe Reischach, née Ratibor [13528]. According to Rutter, “[de László] must have found it hard to leave such pleasant surroundings and the huge castle with its great stretches of flat fields and forest, its quiet spacious life and its warm friendliness, for in January 1899, [Elek de] Lippich [111102], ever his mentor, wrote impatiently, and perhaps a little jealously: ‘I was thinking that you had left Rauden long ago. What on earth are you doing all this time? You have been there long enough to have painted all the Ratibors, living and dead.’”^[4] 

On 17 January the dowager Duchess of Ratibor died at Rauden. Around this time de László left for Budapest to paint the Emperor Franz Joseph [12700], returning to Berlin in February where “through [the Ratibor family’s] good offices he [had] obtained an order to paint [their uncle] the German Chancellor, Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst [4485].”^[5] At this time, according to Rutter,^[6] he also painted another portrait of Baroness Reischach [11283] (untraced) and a second portrait of Princess Egon Ratibor [6079], now in the collection of the Lobkowicz Palace, Prague.

A photograph showing de László and Franz Ratibor similarly dressed and posed is inscribed “Zur Erinnerung an Berlin Feb. März 1899 / Ihr Vormund F Ratibor [In remembrance of Berlin Feb. March 1899 / Your guardian F Ratibor]”, which suggests that Franz was vying with his younger brother Max, whom de László had met first in Budapest in 1897, for the role of mentor and patron.

Franz Ratibor was born at Rauden on 6 April 1849, the second son of Viktor I, Duke of Ratibor and Fürst von Corvey, (1818-1893) and Amélie Princess zu Fürstenberg (1821-1899). He married in Berlin on 5 Jan 1911 Marie Agnes Countess zu Solms-Baruth (1856-1941). They had no children. Franz died at Nieder-Mittlau in Silesia on 27 May 1925.

LITERATURE:

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 159, 167, 168, 174

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 48

CWS 2011