5873

Posthumous portrait
Baron Zsigmond Kornfeld 1913
Standing three-quarter length to the right, head turned in three-quarter profile and looking to the viewer, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, his arms folded across his chest, a curtain behind to the right, against a dark background
Oil on canvas, 113 x 90 cm (44 ½ x 35 ⅜ in.)
Inscribed top left: FOTOGRAFIA UTÁN FESTETTE LÁSZLÓ FÜLÖP E. 3 / LONDON  [Painted from a photograph László Fülöp E. 3 / London]

Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum (Hungarian National Museum), Budapest,

Történelmi Képcsarnok (Historical Gallery)

After the death of Baron Zsigmond Kornfeld, President of the Budapest Stock Exchange, on 24 March 1909, the  vice president wrote to de László that “the Stock Exchange has resolved to commission a portrait of its late President,” and asked the artist whether he would accept the task.^[1] De László very rarely painted from photographs but made exceptions for posthumous portraits of important figures such as Queen Elisabeth of Hungary [110806], at the request of her husband Emperor Franz Joseph [12700], or of soldiers killed in the First World War, such as Prince Maurice of Battenberg [3501].

De László’s method of painting generally required interaction with his sitters: “he made his sitters converse with him, bringing them into an emotionally active state that guaranteed genuine facial features, expressions and gestures. For him the picture was born during the conversation and itself flowed and twisted in the making.”^[2] The artist may have agreed to paint the portrait out of sympathy with Baron Kornfeld, whose career showed some similarities to his own. Kornfeld had risen from very humble beginnings to a position of great eminence.

De László was extremely busy in 1910 and 1911 with commissions for the German Emperor Wilhelm II [4952] and the Spanish Royal family [7925] [7922] [7933] and the present portrait was not completed until late 1913. The portrait may also have been delayed by the artist’s reticence in painting such pictures. Baron Kornfeld’s widow was very pleased with it: “What a great conception and what a masterly style. It made a deep impression on me. It is a great likeness and very characteristic of him. I am happy that he lives on in this masterpiece.”^[3] Lucy de László records the honorarium for the portrait as £666 18s 9d, which is thought to have included the cost of the frame.^[4]

Zsigmond Kornfeld was born in Goltsch-Jenikau, Bohemia^[5] on 27 March 1852, the son of the village distiller. The death of his father when he was fourteen forced him to leave school. He worked in a bank in Prague as a general assistant, from where he soon worked his way up to become deputy manager of the Creditanstalt’s Prague branch. In 1878 Albert von Rothschild, head of the Creditanstalt, sent him to Budapest to the associated Magyar Általános Hitelbank (Hungarian General Credit Bank) where he was concerned with financing the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary. He settled in Hungary in 1879 and began learning Hungarian, becoming fluent by the 1890s. In 1892 he played a significant part in the country’s monetary reform and the introduction of the Korona (Crown) by Sándor Wekerle, the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance [111392][111100]. In 1900 he became Managing Director of the Hungarian General Credit Bank, and its President from 1905. He played a leading part in the financial development and industrialisation of Hungary during the early years of the twentieth century, starting new ventures in manufacturing, mining, river navigation, the railways, and an oil refinery in Fiume^[6] of which he became president.  From 1899 he was President of the Budapest Commodity and Stock Exchange, where he changed the official language from German to Hungarian. He was decorated with the Order of the Iron Crown third class in 1890 and second class in 1893. In 1902 he became a member of the Upper House of Parliament and was created a Baron in 1909.^[7] 

On 12 January 1879 in Vienna, Kornfeld married Betty Frankfurter (1858-1938). The couple had five children: György (born 1880), Mária (born 1881), Móric^[8] (born 1882), Pál (born 1884) and Ferenc (born 1897). In contrast to many ennobled Jews, Kornfeld remained faithful to Judaism throughout his life. The writer Zsigmond Móricz^[9] related that when the Russian Ambassador visited Kornfeld to bestow a decoration on him, he rejected it because of the persecution of the Jews in Russia. He died in Budapest on 24 March 1909.

PROVENANCE:
Stock and Commodity Exchange, Budapest

Presented to the Hungarian National Museum in 1949

LITERATURE:

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley.asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton Publishing, London, 2004, essay by Gábor Bellák, Philip de László in Hungary, pp. 11-19

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 231

•DLA033-036, letter from the Vice-President of the Budapest Commodity and Stock Exchange to de László, 12 May 1909

•DLA162-0162, Pesti Hírlap, 10 May 1913, p. 15
•László, Lucy de, 1913 diary, private collection, p. 149

Pd’O & BS 2018