12056

Charlotte, Hereditary Princess of Saxe-Meiningen 1899

Seated three-quarter-length to the right, her head turned in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing a lace trimmed evening gown with a brooch, a tiara with a large sapphire^[1] and choker, a silk shawl draped over her right arm resting in her lap, her right on the arm of her chair

Oil on canvas, 114 x 93 cm (45 x 36 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: László  F.E. / 1899 

Sitters’ Book I, f. 27: Erinnerung grüszt durch Stürme / u Wetter, / Und schüchtern schreibt einen / Sonnenstrahl / Aufs rothe Gold der welcken / Blätter, / Es war einmal! / Charlotte / Erbprinzessin v. S. Meiningen / Prinzessin v. Preussen / Erdmannsdorf. 10ter Juli / 1899. [Memory beckons through storm and weather / And timidly writes a sunray / On the red gold of the wilting leaves / It happened once upon a time!]

Private Collection

In 1897 de László met Prince Max von Ratibor [10502], the German Consul-General in Budapest, and the two became close friends. In February 1898, he travelled with the Ratibor family to Berlin, where he was introduced to the Dowager Empress Friedrich, mother of the sitter and daughter of Queen Victoria. She invited the artist to visit her in the summer at her home in Kronberg.^[2] In October 1898, on the invitation of Prince Max’s brother Viktor II, Duke of Ratibor, de László travelled to the family castle in Rauden, Silesia,^[3] to paint the Duke [7478] and Duchess [110797] and their sister-in-law Princess Egon von Ratibor, née Princess Leopoldine Lobkowicz [6079].

During his extended stay at Rauden, he became acquainted with other members of the Imperial family and the German and Austrian aristocracy. Among them were the Prince and Princess of Saxe-Meiningen, to whom he was introduced in Breslau^[4] in January 1899 at the soirée they organised in the honour of the Duke as the President of the Silesian Landtag.^[5] 

A few weeks later they met again at Rauden for the funeral of the Duke’s mother, Princess Amélie, née Fürstenberg (1821-1899). De László received the commission to paint Princess Charlotte and she invited him to their summer residence in Schloss Erdmannsdorf^[6] in Silesia for the summer to paint two formal portraits of her in different dresses.^[7] The present picture was started at Schloss Erdmannsdorf but sittings were disrupted by Princess Charlotte’s military obligations as Commander of the 11th Grenadier Regiment.^[8] De László then left for Donaueschingen, to the Fürstenberg Castle to finish the portraits he had started in Vienna of Max Egon II, Fürst zu Fürstenberg and his wife [5297] [3360].^[9] The present portrait was only finished in September at Schloss Zülzhoff^[10] where she was visiting her friends the Schaffgotschs, where the artist was also staying to paint Count Hans Karl Schaffgotsch and his wife [7127] [111901].

De László wrote to his friend and mentor, Elek Lippich [112171], describing the Princess as strange, never looking people in the eye, forcing him to paint her looking down.^[11] He didn’t like her “foxy shrewd nature” and was relieved when the sittings were over and the Princess left Zülzhoff.^[12] The sitter gave de László a set of English silver as a gift, which might have been in lieu of payment as she and her husband were often short of money.^[13] 

The artist made two preparatory studies for the present portrait, one in an almost identical position in red chalk [111994], the other in pencil on paper [9547] showing the Princess standing. In addition to the present portrait, a bust-length portrait was painted at Schloss Erdmannsdorf showing her wearing the same tiara with a green dress [12059]. While at Zülzhoff the artist also painted a head study of the Princess [5101] which remained in his possession and was displayed in his studios in Vienna and London. A study of the sitter’s husband Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen was also painted in 1899 [110817], remains untraced. The artist hoped to paint the sitter’s mother, however, a portrait was never completed. ^[14]

The portraits of Princess Charlotte were the first in a long series of portraits of members of the German Imperial Family, culminating in de László's full-length equestrian portrait of the German Emperor Wilhelm II, completed in 1911 [4952].

Princess Charlotte was born in Potsdam on 24 July 1860, the second child, after the future Emperor Wilhelm II, of Crown Prince Friedrich of Prussia (1831-1888) and Victoria, Princess Royal of Great Britain (1840-1901). She was a temperamentally difficult child whose abilities did not live up to her parents’ high expectations. In adult life she acquired a reputation for having unstable, changeable moods and was regarded as frivolous and pleasure-seeking, with little interest in intellectual pursuits. She enjoyed the social life and gossip of Berlin and held rigidly conservative political views, allying herself with her brother Wilhelm against her parents’ more liberal ideas. Nevertheless, it was Charlotte who attempted to bring about a reconciliation between her brother and their mother, when relations between the two had been deteriorating rapidly at the end of the 1870s. She succeeded but the peace was not to last.^[15] Eventually Charlotte herself became increasingly alienated from her mother.

On 18 February 1878 in Berlin Charlotte married Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen (1851-1928) [110817], the eldest son of Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1826-1914) and his wife Princess Charlotte Frederica of Prussia (1831-1855). The sapphire diamond tiara she is wearing on the portrait was a wedding gift from the groom’s grandmother, Princess Marianne of the Netherlands.^[16] 

The couple lived in a small villa near the Neues Palais, and purchased a villa in Cannes where Charlotte would spend the winters to improve her health. On 12 May 1879 their only child Feodora was born, later Princess Heinrich XXX of Reuss-Köstritz. Charlotte’s relationship with her daughter was to be as difficult as that with her own mother. She  often left her child and spent most of her time socialising in Berlin. She was given a villa near the Tiergarten by her grandfather Wilhem I, who also moved Bernhard to a regiment in Berlin to be closer to his wife. In the mid-1890s Charlotte was involved in the Kotze Affair, in which several members of the high society and the Emperor’s family were accused of sexual debauchery in anonymous letters. In 1896, as a result of her brother's displeasure, Bernhard was transferred to the command of the troops at Breslau.  

Princess Charlotte endured chronic ill-health with a variety of symptoms which suggest that she suffered from porphyria, a genetic disorder which had affected her great-great grandfather King George III. This was recently confirmed by tests performed on her remains and those of her daughter, who also suffered from the same disease and who committed suicide in 1945. Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, Charlotte’s husband succeeded to  the Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen as Duke Bernhard III. On 10 November 1918 he was forced to abdicate. Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen died in Baden Baden on 1 October 1919 at the age of fifty-nine.

PROVENANCE:

In the possession of the sitter;

Polgár Gallery and Auction House, Budapest, 48th Auction, 14-15 October 2003, lot 125

EXHIBITED:

•Kunstverein Frankfurt, 1899 or later^[17]

•Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 1899^[18] 

•Hungarian Fine Art Society, Winter Exhibition (Téli kiállítás), 1899/1900, no. 466^[19] 

•Société des Beaux-Arts, Le salon: huitième exposition, Brussels, 1901 (this could also refer to [12059] or [5101])

•The Dowdeswell Galleries, London, An Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. László, June–July 1908, no. 1

•Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Philip de László “I am an artist of the world…”, 2019, no. 3

LITERATURE:

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, no. 106, Ph. A. von László, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielfeld and Leipzig, 1913, p. 52

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 178

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 57, ill. pp. 23, 56, 68

•NSzL150-0067, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 24 January 1899
•NSzL150-0068, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 3 March 1899

•NSzL150-0080, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 12 July 1899
•NSzL150-0084, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 20 August 1899

•NSzL150-0086, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 16 September 1899

•DLA043-0046, Dr Gabriel von Térey, “Die Winterausstellung im Künstlerhause”, Pester Lloyd, 20 December 1899

•DLA090-0033, German press cutting

CWS, Pd’O & ATG 2014

BS 2023