12700

Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary 1899

Standing three-quarter length slightly to the left, full face, wearing the Hungarian service dress uniform of a Field Marshal, with decorations, a black winter coat open to show a red lining, a sword by his left side, a black mourning armband on his left upper arm, holding a pair of white gloves in his left hand and his shako in his right hand, against a dark red background

Oil on canvas, 146 x 95 cm (57 ½ x 37 ⅜ in.)

Inscribed lower right: László F.E. / Bpesten / 1899 V.  

Previously inscribed upper left: I. FERENCZ JÓZSEF./MDCCCLXXXXIX [in the original photograph, no longer visible]

Sitters' Book I, f. 2: Ferencz József / Budavári királyi palota / 1899. Május 17. [in the artist’s hand: Royal Palace, Budapest / 1899 May 17]

Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum [Hungarian National Museum], Budapest

In 1896 the National Land Credit Institute (Országos Földhitelintézet) decided to commission a portrait of the King of Hungary, probably as part of the millennial celebrations.^[1] In early October de László was in Perbenyik, North-Eastern Hungary, painting members of the family of Count József Mailáth [13008]. On his return to Budapest he was visited by László Arany,^[2] a Director of the Land Credit Institute, who told him that he was being recommended to paint the portrait from life by Institute President Count Aurél Dessewffy.^[3] Count Mailáth wrote to Count Dessewffy supporting de László’s candidature, as did the notable landscape painter Károly Telepy, who was secretary of the Hungarian Fine Art Society.^[4]

De László originally planned to paint the Emperor seated with light falling on his head and hands, a composition inspired by Lenbach’s portrait of Emperor William I, which the artist saw on his visit to Frankfurt in 1896.^[5] He started work in May 1899 at the Royal Palace in Budapest after spending the previous months travelling and painting important sitters such as the 2nd Duke of Ratibor [111943] and his family at Rauden; the German Chancellor Chlodwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst [4485] in Berlin in March and worked on the posthumous portrait of the Emperor’s wife in Vienna [7857] in April. De László returned the Emperor’s uniform in early June and received an honorarium of 1000 Florins for the portrait.^[6]

The Emperor was almost seventy but still an impressive figure with his grey moustache and mutton-chop whiskers. During the sittings he was surprised by de László’s way of painting directly onto a blank canvas, “accustomed as he was to the methods of Gyula Benczúr, whose habit was to use a photograph as a framework for a portrait. The Emperor was so astonished by this intuitive brushwork that he told numerous people about it.”^[7] De László described the Emperor as having been very pleasant and amiable, but his greatest pleasure was that Franz Joseph spoke to him in Hungarian throughout.^[8] The medals he wears in the portrait include: The Order of the Golden Fleece around his neck, the 1873 War Medal, the 1898 Golden Jubilee Medal, the Military Long Service Cross for 50 years’ service, and the Imperial Russian Order. He is also shown with a black mourning band round his arm for his wife, the Empress Elizabeth, who had been assassinated in Geneva on 10 September 1898. In 1901 de Lászlό agreed that a copy of the portrait should be made for the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Vác, but it has not been traced.^[9]

De László painted two further portraits of the sitter, one in 1903 as a gift for the retiring German Ambassador in Vienna, Fürst Eulenburg [10664] and in 1907 for the Park Club in Budapest [13020]. Both show the Emperor seated, de László perhaps recalling his first thoughts regarding the composition of the present portrait. He also made three posthumous portraits of the sitter’s wife, Empress Elisabeth, one in 1899 [7857], now in the same collection as the present picture, and two full-lengths, one completed in 1904 [110806] and untraced, and another very similar [112109] that the artist rejected and which remained in his studio until his death before being destroyed in accordance with his will.

Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, King of Croatia and Apostolic King of Hungary, was born at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna 18 August 1830, the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl (1802-1878) and Sophie, née Princess of Bavaria (1805-1872). His ambitious mother was often referred as “the only man at court” and persuaded her husband to resign his right to the throne in favour of Franz Joseph. He was educated for the role of a future emperor and taught the virtues of piety, responsibility and diligence. In March 1848 revolution broke out in Vienna and in October the Imperial family was forced to flee to Olmütz in Moravia. On 2 December 1848 Emperor Ferdinand (1793-1875), feeble-minded, ill and incapable of ruling, abdicated in favour of his eighteen-year-old nephew.

The first decade of Franz Joseph’s reign was characterised by autocracy and by military campaigns in Italy and Hungary. In 1853 he survived an assassination attempt by an Hungarian nationalist and it was not until 1867 that the so-called Ausgleich, the reconciliation between Austria and Hungary and the creation of the Dual Monarchy, was achieved and Franz Joseph was crowned King of Hungary. Although the Emperor liked to be considered a Friedenskaiser (Emperor of Peace) he had to face serious opposition both inside and outside the borders of the empire which culminated in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo in 1914. Due to a complex system of alliances the Emperor’s declaration of war against Serbia finally led to the outbreak of the First World War.    

Franz Joseph’s private life was full of adversity. In 1854 he married his sixteen-year-old cousin, Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria. They had four children: Sophie (born 1855), who died aged two, Gisela (born 1856), Rudolf (born 1858) and Marie Valerie (born 1868). Although life with the eccentric and capricious empress ‘Sisi’ was difficult, Franz Joseph adored his wife. Nevertheless, it seems to have been Elisabeth herself who, always on the run from life at the Austrian court, in 1885 made the initial contact between Franz Joseph and the actress Katharina Schratt (1853-1940) who became the Emperor’s mistress; she was also an important friend and companion during the last thirty years of his life. He experienced several family tragedies: the execution of his brother Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, in 1867, the suicide of his son Rudolf in 1889 and in 1898 the assassination of his wife in Geneva, a blow from which he would never fully recover. After a reign of sixty-eight years, Franz Joseph, who had always considered himself the foremost civil servant of the empire, died in Vienna on 21 November 1916, in the middle of the Great War he had set in motion.   

PROVENANCE:          

Presented to the Hungarian National Museum by the National Land Credit Institute, 1950

EXHIBITED:          

•Conversationshaus, Baden Baden, 1899, no. 1

•Kunstverein, Frankfurt, 1899

•Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, 1899

•Hungarian Fine Art Society, Budapest, Téli kiállítás [Winter Exhibition], 1899-1900

•Galerie Schulte, Berlin, 1900

LITERATURE:        

•Képes Folyóirat, 1898 (ill.)

•Vasárnapi Újság, vol. 47, issue 33, Budapest, 19 August 1900, ill. front cover

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 153, 167, 183, 211-12, 293

•Pauer, Hans, Kaiser Franz Joseph I, Herold, Wien/München, 1966, no. 442

•Hamann, Brigitte (ed.), Die Habsburger. Ein biographisches Lexikon [The Habsburgs. A biographical Dictionary] Verlag Carl Ueberreuter, Vienna, 1988, pp. 138-141

•Sandra de Laszlo, ed., and Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2004, p. 32, ill. 19

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Philip de László. His Life and Art, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2010, p. 56, ill. 29  

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 35

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 75

•Field, Katherine, Philip Alexius de László; 150th Anniversary Exhibition, de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 23

•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. 47, ill. pp. 18, 52

•NSzL150-0036, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 16 October 1896

•NSzL150-0038, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 28 October 1896

•NSzL150-0039, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 18 November 1896

•DLA 1898 parcel, Képes Folyóirat, ill.

•NSzL150-0075, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 28 April 1899

•DLA162-0141, Pesti Hírlap, 9 May 1899, p. 7

•DLA162-0232, Pesti Hírlap, 14 May 1899, p. 7

•DLA068-0164, receipt from the Emperor’s valet Raimund Zrunek to de László, 4 June 1899

•DLA090-0050, Dr. Gabriel von Térey, “Brief aus Baden-Baden" [Letter from Baden-Baden], Pester Lloyd, 20 August 1899, p. 5

•DLA090-0193, “Kunstausstellung im Conversationshaus”, German press cutting, [undated, presumably 1899]  

•DLA090-0033, German press cutting, [undated, presumably 1899]

•DLA029-0107, letter from Elek Lippich to de László, 1 October 1901

•DLA029-0109, letter from Elek Lippich to de László, 26 October 1901

•DLA 1906 parcel, Die Woche, issue 24, p. 930, ill.

•DLA090-0240, press cutting, [undated]

We are grateful to Dr Gergely Sallay of the Hadtörténeti Múzeum, (Museum of Military History), Budapest, for his help in identifying the decorations worn by the sitter.

ATG 2011

BS & Pd’O 2017

KK 2022