4955

Study portrait

German Emperor Wilhelm II, King of Prussia 1909

Half-length slightly to the left, full face, wearing full dress uniform as Colonel-in-Chief of the Queen’s Regiment of Cuirassiers of the Guard, with decorations, all against a cloudy sky

Oil on canvas, 91 x 70 cm (35 ⅞ x 27 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P A László 

The House of Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern Castle, Germany

This study portrait is one of twenty portraits de László painted of the German Imperial family between 1899 and 1913. In 1908 he went to Potsdam to paint a three-quarter length portrait of  Empress Auguste Victoria [4962], a portrait of her daughter Princess Victoria Luise [5092] (at present untraced), a portrait of Crown Prince Wilhelm in uniform [111479] (which also remains untraced) and a formal half-length portrait of his wife Crown Princess Cecilie [4489]. He also completed an informal head study of the German Emperor Wilhelm II, King of Prussia [4789], a commission de László had coveted since 1899, when he had first painted the Empress [4960] and her daughter [5090].

In the summer of 1909 de László was invited to the Imperial summer residence at Wilhelmshöhe to paint a large state portrait, depicting the Emperor as Colonel-in-Chief of the Queen’s Regiment of Cuirassiers of the Guard with his horse and a Borzoi dog at his feet [4952]. That picture is now in the collection of the Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten, Berlin-Brandenburg. It was finally completed in London in 1911 and presented to German Emperor Wilhelm II, King of Prussia in May that year.

In preparation for that complex portrait de László made several oil sketches of the entire composition [5044] [112232] & [11817]), two head-studies [4958] and the present portrait. There also exists a contemporary copy of the present portrait by the artist Joseph A. Fleck (1892-1977).

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4952].

LITERATURE:

•Kapsilber, Max, Der Hof Wilhelms des Zweiten, Michels & Cie, Berlin, 1911

•Daheim – Kalender für das Deutsche Reich auf das Jahr 1911, Bielefeld und Leipzig, ill. p. 15

•Esposizione Internazionale di Belle Arti, Roma 1911: Ungheria, Pátria, Budapest, 1911, pp. 198–199, ill. cat. no. 114

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 171–172, 182–183, 242–243, 264–267, 268–269, 272, 286, 316

•Bumiller, Casimir et al. (ed.), Adel im Wandel: 200 Jahre Mediatisierung in Oberschwaben, Thorbecke, Ostfildern, 2006, p. 249, ill. IX.7

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 117–119, 126

•DLA103-0077, Press cutting, The New York Times Magazine, 9 May 1926, pp. 5-6

AG 2013