DLA036-0019  Translation

PESTI HIRLAP

BUDAPEST V, VILMOS CSÁSZÁR-ÚT 78.

PUBLISHERS: LÉGRÁDY BROTHERS

EDITOR’S OFFICE

Budapest, 5th October 1935

Dear Fülöp,

Just a few lines to thank you for your letter of 30th September and the splendid photographs that were enclosed with it, particularly the one that you signed for me.^[1] It now ranks among my most treasured mementoes.

With this letter I am sending you the portrait exhibition^[2] catalogue, as well as the notice about it that we featured in our newspaper. I have just come from the exhibition opening, which I went to with Dr Ottó Légrády.^[3] He was much taken with your marvellous series of paintings, as well as with the unusually large number of eminent people there. Your paintings are displayed on the best wall in the whole show, in the very first room, facing visitors as they come in. There was always a dense crowd of people in front of the paintings: people felt they were lucky if they

[Page 2]

managed to get close.

Your portrait of Sándor Wekerle [possibly 111100] has been given a prominent position in the second room, displayed in such a way as to be visible from the first. I “had my work cut out for me” to get that into the show. The photograph I sent you doesn’t give a true idea of how bad a condition it was in. We managed to have it excellently restored, though, so that it has completely regained its former classic beauty. The restoration naturally took some time, and despite the fact that I was in touch with the Nemzeti Szalon almost on a daily basis, it almost didn’t get included in the exhibition because of a variety of formalities which I won’t bore you with. The fact that it is there at all is entirely due to my forceful intervention. The only trace of all this in the catalogue is the fact that the painting has been given a subsidiary number.^[4] 

So that you can see how the paintings are displayed, I took photographs of them, but I haven’t had the photos back yet, so I’ll send them on Monday. With multiple warm greetings to you all,

László

Editorial Notes:

DLA036-0019 is likely a postscript to this letter.

Doctor László Siklóssy de Pernesz (1881–1951), Hungarian art critic; for biographical notes, see [111404].

AH (translation)

01/07/2025

KB (summary)

14/10/2009