6518
Academic work
An Italian Girl in her National Costume 1891
Half length, slightly to the left, her head turned in three quarter profile away from the viewer and looking to the left, wearing a white blouse, black corset, pink patterned scarf in her hair and a black choker with gold brooch or ornament attached to it
Oil on canvas, 58 x 47 cm (27 ⅞ x 18 ½ in.)
Inscribed lower left: László Fülöp / Páris 1891 IV / László F / Páris
Private Collection
De László began his studies in Paris at the Académie Julian in October 1890 having been accepted on the strength of the depictions of peasant life that he had painted in Ó-Becse.[1] He was immediately accepted into Professor Lefebvre’s[2] class, where students were already engaged in painting a life study for the annual class competition. In his reminiscences, de László recalled: “I found a few students already in front of their easels at work on the model, an Italian girl in her national costume. I selected my place at once. It was rather a bad one, in the first row, and I saw the model a little foreshortened. I was so near that I was able to lean my canvas against the platform on which she was sitting. Meanwhile more students came pouring in, a few of my countrymen among them. It was a class for more advanced students, and some of my older compatriots expressed surprise that I should be taking part in the competition. Their remarks did not upset me, since I was there at the desire of Lefèbre [sic]. I began painting with all my heart and soul. We were allowed six mornings to paint the picture, and I soon discovered how my countrymen and the other students neglected their work, usually coming in very late, or tired out by the life they led. Although I started a day later than the rest I received the second prize for my study which I gave to my sister Szeréna.[3] One of my colleagues took a photo of me as a joke, with my palette in hand, in my dirty painting-coat, looking triumphant in front of my prize study."[4]
PROVENANCE:
Marczell László, the artist’s brother;
By descent from his second wife
LITERATURE:
•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 65-66, ill.
•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 21, ill. 9.
BS 2014
[1] A small town in the Bánát, a southern province of Hungary, now Beče , in Serbia. For notes on Ó-Becse and some of the works he painted there, see [11463]
[2] Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911), French figure and portrait painter
[3] Szeréna Laub (d.1935), later Mrs. Gyula Krämer. She was the second of the artist's three sisters.
[4] Rutter, Owen, op. cit., pp. 65-66. The Hungarian inscription on the photograph reads: "Szerényebb vagyok az / életben mind [sic] a / fotografián / Kedves Markovits bácsinak / emlékül/ Páris 189i április 27./ László Fülöp". [In real life I am more modest than in the photograph To dear uncle Markovits as a souvenir. Paris, 27 April 1891]