4787

Professor Sándor von Liezen-Mayer 1893

Seated half-length in profile to the left, three-quarter face turned towards the viewer, wearing a dark grey suit, wing collar and blue-grey cravat, a white handkerchief in his breast pocket, a gold ring on the little finger of his left hand and holding a pair of grey gloves, both hands resting on a walking stick, all against a brown and grey background

Oil on canvas, 102.5 x 72 cm (40 ⅜ x 28 ⅜ in.)

Indistinctly inscribed upper left:  ... / München 1893 /  

Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

De László met Sándor von Liezen-Mayer^[1] during his first visit to Munich in the autumn of 1889. Since the late 1860s many aspiring Hungarian painters had been drawn to the dynamic art metropolis of Munich inspired by the example of Mihály Munkácsy. Several, including Liezen-Mayer and Gyula Benczúr,^[2] joined the history painting class of Karl von Piloty^[3] at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, but from 1886 the private art school of Simon Hollósy^[4] increasingly attracted young Hungarian painters keen to establish a more Hungarian style of painting independent of the Germanic tradition, but influenced by the naturalistic Barbizon School of Paris.

Liezen-Mayer himself, despite his German name, was born in the town of Győr in western Hungary on 24 January 1839. Following the traditional course for Hungarian painters at that time he studied briefly at the Vienna Academy under Carl Rahl^[5] and Carl von Blaas,^[6] before moving in 1856 to Munich, where he studied with Piloty from 1862 to 1867. From 1870 until 1872 he was working as a portrait painter in Vienna, during which time he painted the Emperor Franz Joseph. In 1872 he returned to Munich where he married Florence Schwing, a “small, pretty American, a true ‘fairy-like lady.’”^[7] A daughter, Cora, was born the following year. In Munich he completed a number of historical works heavily influenced by Piloty.

In 1880 he was appointed Director of the Stuttgart Art School but returned to Munich in 1883 as Professor of History Painting at the Academy. In 1893 he became Professor of Religious Painting. Despite living so long in Munich, he always remained a conspicuous member of the Hungarian colony, often wearing traditional Hungarian dress.

De László, having won a Hungarian State Scholarship of 300 florins and eager to leave Budapest, had initially intended to study at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Venice but a serious attack of typhoid forced him to return home soon after his arrival. Munich was his second choice, but once there he rejected the idea of studying with Hollósy (“a good artist, with modernist tendencies…but the spirit and morale of the school put me off”)^[8] and went to Liezen-Mayer for advice. Liezen-Mayer recommended him to the Director of the Academy, the portrait painter Friedrich August von Kaulbach.^[9] Despite arriving in the middle of term, he was accepted as a regular student and remained enrolled at the Academy until he moved to Paris in the autumn of 1890.

The following year, it was Liezen-Mayer who arranged for de László to return to the Academy as one of his six “composition students” – painting compositions rather than studies – with studios of their own, who worked independently from Liezen-Mayer’s own class for history painting. He also introduced the impoverished young student to his neighbours, Wilhelm^[10] and Marie Valentin, who rented him a room in their house. The Valentins were to become a surrogate family to de László, and his sister Pauline later married their son Karl.^[11]

De László described Liezen-Mayer thus: “As an artist he was talented but conventional, and belonged to the old school of Piloty. Although far from modern, he was an interesting and kindly man and a good master. He was more like a soldier than a professor of art in his dress, his walk and his way of speaking, which was brusque and to the point. He had some good pupils, the majority of whom were Hungarians…I chose Liezenmayer [sic] because I admired his work, particularly his magnificent illustrations of Goethe’s Faust.”^[12]

De László developed an almost filial affection for Liezen-Mayer, and aroused the jealousy of his fellow students by visiting him every day in his own studio and accompanying him on long walks. “The walks and discussions with my master, who was thirty years older than I, were certainly of great influence on my inner life,”^[13] he wrote. “He was a strange character, very retiring, rather haughty and inclined to be too critical…He loved to talk about art and to philosophize on life. I constantly felt that he was a lonely man, rather bitter, and disappointed with himself and his work. He was too much of a doctrinaire in art and had very little spontaneity. In other ways he was simple and could be charming. There was much distinction and nobility about him, mixed with vanity.”^[14]

At the end of his last term in Munich in 1893 de László painted the present portrait of his master “as a token of my respect and gratitude,”^[15] as well as making a sketch of his “pretty, piquant, golden-haired and intelligent”^[16] daughter [112112] (untraced). For Schleinitz, this “vigorously worked out portrait” demonstrates de László’s “full artistic momentum and resilience.”^[17] It was exhibited that year at the Munich Annual Glaspalast Exhibition, together with “Evening Prayer” [10669]. For both pictures de László was awarded the Academy’s Silver Medal. Later that year the portrait was exhibited at the Fine Art Society in Budapest. It is one of the first portraits by de László to have received international acclaim.

De László’s relationship with his master ended badly. In 1897 de László returned to Munich and visited Liezen-Mayer to congratulate him for winning the Gold Medal at the Millennium Exhibition in Budapest the previous year for his “Election of Matthias Hunyady as King of Hungary.”^[18] When de László informed him he himself had won the Large Bronze Millennium Medal,^[19] Liezen-Mayer’s vanity prevented him from offering one word of congratulation. “The atmosphere became so tense that I had to take my leave…That afternoon at his studio was one of my first great disappointments. I left him feeling sad at heart.”^[20] Liezen-Mayer died soon after, on 19 February 1898, of liver cancer, leaving his wife and daughter in straightened circumstances. De László believed that “both entered a convent as nurses.”^[21]

A portrait engraving was also made of Liezen-Mayer by Wilhelm Krauskopf.^[22]

SOURCE: Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 50-1, 77, 78, 79-81, 86, 129-30, 155

EXHIBITED:                  

•Glaspalast, Munich, Jahresausstellung, 1893, no. 855

•Hungarian Fine Art Society, Budapest, Téli kiállítás [Winter Exhibition], 1893-1894, no. 35

•Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Jahresausstellung, 1894, no. 20

•Műcsarnok, Hungarian Fine Art Society, Budapest, Ezredéves Országos Kiállítás [Millennium Exhibition], 1896, no. 784

•Műcsarnok, Liezen-Mayer Sándor és Györök Leó kiállítása [Exhibition of Sándor Liezen-Mayer and Leo Györök], 1900

LITERATURE:         

•DLA, loose material, Pesti Hírlap Vasárnapja, p. 43, ill.

•Otthon: Szépirodalmi könyvtár; képes havi folyóirat, vol. IV, issue 3, Budapest,

 December 1893, p. 259, ill.

•“Die Jahresausstellung 1893 der Künstlergenossenschaft zu München” in Die Kunst für Alle, issue 21, 1 August 1893, p. 324, ill.        

•Vasárnapi Újság, Budapest, 14 April 1907, p. 295

•Schleinitz, Otto (von), Künstler Monographien, no. 106, Ph. A. von László, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, p. 24, ill. pl. 15

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 129-30

•Schweers, Hans F., Gemälde in deutschen Museen: Katalog der ausgestellten und depotgelagerten Werke, Munich, 1994, p. 1047

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 38, 47

•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. 14, ill.

•DLA031-0039, letter from István Thomán to de László, 19 April 1893

•DLA162-0427, Pesti Hírlap, 25 November 1893, p. 5

•DLA162-0291, Pesti Hírlap, 18 February 1900, p. 8

CWS 2008