5892

Jan Kubelík 1903

Half-length, full face to the viewer, wearing a dark jacket over a white high-collared shirt, playing the violin

Oil on canvas, 71.2 x 57.8 cm (28 x 22 ¾ in.)

Inscribed top left: P.A. László / 1903   

Studio Inventory, p. 14 (80): The Violinist Kubelik. Painted in Vienna

Private Collection

Jan Kubelík was one of the greatest violinists of his time. De László and his wife, herself a talented violinist, first heard Kubelík play in Vienna in 1903, at a party given by Count Nigra, the Italian Ambassador in Vienna and a great friend of Princess Pauline Metternich [110466]. They met Kubelík often afterwards before de László made this portrait of him. The de Lászlós were also friends with the other giant among violinists of the day, Joseph Joachim, whom de László also painted, twice, in 1900 [5850] and 1903 [5847].  In 1905 he made a portrait of Lucy with her violin [6765] of which Williams wrote: “A great violinist has pointed out that the angle at which the violin is held, and the touch of the fingers on the strings, make this, like László’s portrait of Kubelík, one of the few pictures of a violinist playing his instrument, not as the painter would have it played, but as the musician knows it can only be played.”^[1] De László has portrayed Kubelík playing either a 1735 violin by Guarneri del Gesù, presented to him in Vienna in 1899, or a Stradivarius dated 1687 presented to him in 1901. He later owned a second Stradivarius, the “Emperor” of 1715. A photograph of the artist’s first Vienna studio taken c.1903 shows the present portrait unfinished but as originally conceived as a three-quarter length portrait. The artist’s decision to cut the portrait down, creating a much tauter composition with the bow of the violin forming a strong diagonal across a square in the lower two-thirds of the canvas, owes something to the geometrical ideals of composition of the Vienna Secessionists.

Kubelík was born on 5 July 1880 in Michle near Prague,^[2] the younger son of a gardener. His father, a talented amateur violinist, started his elder son on the violin at seven but soon found that five-year-old Jan was keener, and after six months a better player than his father. Jan studied the violin with Karel Weber and Darel Ondříček, and at eight, he entered the Prague Conservatory, where he trained with Otakar Ševčík. At the outset of his career in 1898 he was hailed as ‘a second Paganini’ and in 1900 he made his debut in London. With a good manager and an astute agent masterminding his career from Budapest, so began a decade of triumphs that earned him vast wealth. The year the present portrait was painted he married Countess Marianne Czáky-Szell and acquired an estate in Silesia where he spent as much time as he could with his rapidly increasing family (they had five daughters, all violinists, and three sons including the conductor Rafael Kubelík).

Kubelík’s performances dazzled his audiences, with his dark looks and slim build highlighting his technical brilliance. In the years before the First World War, however, his popularity began to wane, and he became the victim of a number of unlucky business speculations. By 1915 he had retired to concentrate on composition and had six concertos, a symphony and a number of shorter works published. In 1920 he resumed his concert career, touring around the world and once again filling the concert halls in Britain and New York.

Kubelík died in Prague on 5 December 1940.

SOURCE: Blom, Eric, ed. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edition, London, 1954, pp. 287-88

PROVENANCE:          

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:        

•Nemzeti Szalon, Budapest, Exhibition of Works by László Fülöp, April 1907, no. 28

•The Fine Art Society, London, Portrait Paintings and Drawings by Philip A. László, May and June 1907, no. 40

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies by Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1923, no. 10

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6 -22 January 2004, no. 30

•Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Philip de László “I am an artist of the world…”, 2019, no. 6

LITERATURE:          

•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien, no. 106, Ph A. von László, Bielefeld and Leipzig (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, ill. p. 58, pl. 68

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 219-20, 225

•Clifford, Derek, The Paintings of P.A. de Laszlo, London, 1969, monochrome ill. pl. 17

•De Laszlo, Sandra ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 94, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 86, 184, ill. 49

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 65

•Field, Katherine ed., Gábor Bellák and Beáta Somfalvi, Philip de László (1869-1937); "I am an Artist of the World", Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2019, p. 63, ill. p. 62

•DLA140-0212, Térey, Dr. Gabriel von, “A Hungarian Portrait Painter: Philip de László,” The Studio, vol. 40, no. 170, May 1907, pp. 254-67

•DLA140-0186, “Some Art Notes. Portraits by Philip C. László [sic]. The Work of Philip A. László, The Well-Known Hungarian Painter”, Black and White, 8 June 1907, pp. 782-3, ill. p. 783

CWS 2008