7451

Daniela Grunelius 1898

Three-quarter length, seated to the left, full-face and looking to the viewer, wearing a white chiffon dress and a red necklace, all against a dark background

Oil on canvas, 78 x 64 cm (30 ⅝ x 25 ¼ in.)

Inscribed upper left: DANIELA

Inscribed lower right: László F.E. / Cronberg 1898 

Private Collection

Having seen de László’s portraits of Ferdinand of Bulgaria [3937] and his wife [3715] in Budapest in 1896, the Rhineland industrialist Wilhelm Preetorius invited de László to Mainz to paint his daughters [3346] [12564] [111112] [111113]. De László arrived in October and was soon adopted into the circle of prominent local families. Several commissions followed and de László suggests in his memoirs that the present portrait is of this period: “From Mainz I went to Cronberg, near Frankfort [sic], where Herr Grunelius, the well-known banker, had commissioned me to paint a head of his little daughter, Daniela.”^[1] Both Schleinitz and Williams incorrectly date the portrait to 1895, possibly because the former claims de László had already met Preetorius in Sofia in 1894.^[2] 

Adèle Maria Daniela von Grunelius, born on 6 June 1893, was the daughter of Carl von Grunelius and his Alsatian wife Marie-Adèle, whose father, Albert Tachard, was a lawyer, deputé for Alsace, co-founder of Le Temps in Paris and French Minister Plenipotentiary in Brussels. The portrait was most probably painted in early October 1898, when Daniela was five years old, at the same time as de László painted Daniela’s father Carl [110613] at his villa in Kronberg, in the Taunus Mountains just north of Frankfurt.^[3] Even while de László was working on the portrait it attracted attention, with the Empress Friedrich visiting from nearby Friedrichsruh to observe the progress. So impressed was the Empress that she recommended de László’s work to her mother, Queen Victoria, which subsequently led to the Queen commissioning de László to paint General Sir George White [7724] for St James’s Palace in 1900.

While the meticulous observation of the clothing in the present portrait still owes much to his teachers Liezen-Mayer and Benjamin Constant, and the high viewpoint perhaps to Sargent, the freshness and immediacy of the sitter’s expression ensured that this picture became one of de László’s first international successes. It was exhibited to great praise at the Paris Salon of 1899 beside de László’s portrait of the eighty-year-old Chancellor Hohenlohe [4485], and was featured in The Studio in the same year. Although Rutter erroneously dated the portrait’s exhibition at the Salon to 1898, he wrote: “The portrait of Daniela aroused particular attention and was reproduced in colour on the front page of L’Illustration. Mr Harry P. Gill^[4] made [de László] an offer to buy it for the National Art Gallery of Adelaide, South Australia,^[5] and on learning it was not for sale wrote in disappointment: ‘I can only say that I had looked upon the little one – so sweet – as already upon the walls of our gallery and had visualized our students seeing how a child’s innocence could live on canvas.’”^[6] 

Over the following decade de László was to paint many more members of the families he had got to know on that first visit to the Rhineland in 1896, including Daniela’s aunt, Madame Louis van Loon, née Adèle Françoise Tachard [7409],^[7] in 1901 and Emma von Grunelius, née Mumm von Schwarzenstein [110615], in 1907. However when he moved to London that year, it was the portrait of Daniela that he chose for his exhibition at the Fine Art Society.

In his monograph of 1922 Williams was moved to write of Daniela’s portrait: “Petted but unspoiled, shielded like a delicate flower from every rough wind, the little lady looks joyously and confidently into the future. The whole picture is full of eager happiness and the joy of life, radiant in the morning dew of careless childhood.”^[8] 

In 1915 Daniela married Major Karl von Barton but they divorced in 1920. The following year she married the Baden landowner Max von Wogau (1884-1949). They had a son, who was killed in 1944 aged nineteen, and a daughter. Daniela died on 5 February 1965.

EXHIBITED:         

•Hungarian Fine Art Society, Budapest, Winter Exhibition [Téli Kiállítás], 1898-99, no. 232

•Conversationshaus, Baden Baden, 1899

•Paris Salon, Paris, Salon de la societé des artistes francais, 1899, no. 1123

•Fine Art Society, London, An Exhibition of Portrait Paintings and Drawings by Philip A. László, 1907, no. 37

LITERATURE:          

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, n° 106. Ph. A. von László, Verlagen & Klasing, Bielefeld und Leipzig 1913, p. 29, ill. pl. 20         

•Williams, Oakley, Selections from the Work of P.A. de László, London, 1921, pp. 9, 12, ill. opp. p. 8

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 154-5, 160-1, 233, ill. opp. p. 152

•Grever, Tonko and Annemieke Heuft (Sandra de Laszlo, British ed.), De László in Holland: Dutch Masterpieces by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), Paul Holberton publishing, London, p. 35, ill. p. 37

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 50, 95

•DLA029-0026, Carl von Grunelius to de László, 9 January 1898

•DLA162-0042, Pesti Hírlap, 3 December 1898, p. 2

•DLA090-0222, press cutting (Hungarian FAS, Winter exhibition)

•DLA140-0068, “Studio-Talk”, The Studio, vol. 16, no. 72, March 1899, pp. 130-2; ill. p.131

•NSzL150-0080, letter from de László to Lippich, 12 July 1899

•DLA140-0075, Figaro Illustré, special edition, Paris: Jean Boussod, Manzi, Joyant & Cie, July 1899,

ill., front cover

•DLA090-0050, Térey, Dr. Gabriel von, “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]  

•DLA140-0085, Abels, Ludwig, “Das Werk des Filipp E. László”, Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, vol. V, Vienna: von Artaria & co., 1900, p. 199

•DLA140-0155, Montesquiou-Fezansac, Robert (de), “Un portraitiste lyrique, Philipp Laszlô”, L’Art et les artistes, Revue d’art des deux mondes, issue 15, 15 June 1906, II, p. 97, ill.

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

•DLA140-0244, Colucci, Virginia, Un Maestro del Ritratto: Philip A. Làszló (sic), Siena: L. Lazzeri, 1910, p. 5

CWS 2008