2340

Alice Barbi, Baroness Wolff von Stomersee 1903

Head-and-shoulders, full face, head turned slightly to the right, wearing an off the shoulder evening dress and a necklace

Oil on canvas, [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: László F.E. / 1903 / Vienna 

Private Collection

Welcoming her at a reception in his London studio in 1926, twenty-five years after they had first met in Budapest, de László still rated Alice Barbi among “my old friends.”^[1] From the very beginning he had been fascinated both by the talent and personality of the famous Italian-born mezzo-soprano and violinist and he immediately asked her to sit for him. One of the two paintings he made of her in 1901, a half-length portrait [2789] remained with the sitter, the other, a bust-length study [8835], stayed in the possession of the artist.

The present portrait was painted in Vienna at the beginning of 1903 and found wide recognition through a reproduction by the Viennese photographer Josef Löwy. It was exhibited at the Spring Exhibition of the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1903 and a review of the show soon praised its “subtle and sketchy manner” and compared it to the style of the renowned German painter Franz von Lenbach, although, in contrast to the Munich master’s manner, de László’s art “adapts [more] to the personality he paints.”^[2] Other critics found the portrait “a bit too soulful.”^[3] The reproduction obviously added to the portrait’s fame, and in 1904 when it was again shown at the Vienna Künstlerhaus exhibition, it was “already well-known because of the heliogravure.”^[4]

For biographical information on the sitter, see [8835].

EXHIBITED:

•Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Spring Exhibition, 1903

•Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Spring Exhibition, 1904

•Venice Biennale, April, 1905, Hall III, no. 12a

•The Dowdeswell Galleries, London, An Exhibition of Portraits by Philip A. László, June and July 1908, no. 5.

•Royal Society of British Artists, Autumn Exhibition, 1910, no. 26

•The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, Dublin, Annual Exhibition, 1911, no. 182

•French Gallery, London, 1923

•French Gallery, London, 1924

LITERATURE:

•The Studio Magazine, London, 1904, Vol. XXXII (32), p. 170, ill. p.169

•Reclam’s Universum, 1907, 1908

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, no. 106, Ph. A. von László, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, p. 75, ill. p. 52, pl. 60

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 210, 220–221

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 87, ill. 50

•DLA090-0118, newspaper article, Berliner Tageblatt, 6 April 1903

•DLA090-0168, newspaper article [date and periodical unknown]

•DLA010-0007, letter from Clémence Rose to de László, 14 April 1903

•DLA090-0174, newspaper article, Vienna, 1904 [date and periodical unknown]

•DLA010-0017, letter from Jenő Radisics to de László, 20 May 1905

•DLA162-0448, Pesti Hírlap, 27 August 1905, p. 4

ATG 2014