6079

Princess Egon von Ratibor, née Princess Leopoldine Lobkowicz 1899

Half-length to the left, head full face to the viewer, wearing a blue and white striped gown and an organza stole tied in a bow at her breast, with pearl drop earrings and a large white hat decorated with an ostrich plume

Oil on panel, 72.5 x 58.5 cm (28 ½ x 23 in.)

Inscribed lower right: László F.E. / 1899 / II 

Inscribed upper left with a coronet above the initial L

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 18: Leopoldine Prssin Ratibor - / Lobkowitz [sic] / 11. / VI 99

Lobkowicz Collections, Lobkowicz Palace, Prague Castle, Czech Republic

The success of de László's portraits of Prince Max Ratibor [10502] and his wife [4519] and daughter [110799] in 1897 led the following year to an invitation to the family's castle at Rauden in Upper Silesia (now Rudy, Poland) to paint more members of the family.

On 13 October 1898, de László wrote to Lucy Guinness: “I have been here a week with Prince Ratibor, where I am painting three large portraits.”^[1] Two of these were grand formal portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Ratibor [7478] & [110797] and it is likely that the third he refers to is the present portrait of the Duke’s recently widowed sister-in-law, as the ten other known portraits painted at Rauden around this time are sketches or head studies. The portrait of Leopoldine Ratibor is, nevertheless, dated February 1899, but given the complexity of the compositions of those of the Duke and Duchess and the sheer amount of work he carried out while at Rauden, it is not surprising that he took so long to complete it. It is strongly evocative of Gainsborough’s portrait of Mrs Siddons, and the striped silk dresses featured in both pictures are almost identical.^[2] Moreover, both sitters also wear a very similar hat with imposing ostrich plumes, black in Gainsborough’s work, and white in de László’s. Even though Leopoldine is only represented half-length, and not three-quarter length, like Mrs Siddons, de László painted her bust from the same viewpoint, which strengthens the parallel between the pictures. The artist may not have seen Gainsborough’s original portrait until June 1899, when he went to London for the first time, but he would most certainly have come across reproductions of it prior to that.

In the same letter to Lucy Guinness de László wrote: “I remain here till the end of the month, then I leave to spend four months at home where my family expect me.” De László was at this time building himself an imposing house and studio in Budapest and was keen to return to oversee the work, but the charms of the extended Ratibor family and the prospect of a ready stream of sitters persuaded him to extend his stay past Christmas. In January 1899 de László's mentor in Budapest, Elek de Lippich, jealous of the young painter's new-found popularity among the German High Aristocracy, and frustrated by his keenness to paint portraits abroad rather than Hungarian subjects, wrote, “I was thinking you had left Rauden long ago. What on earth are you doing all this time? You have been there long enough to have painted all the Ratibors, living and dead.” De László was too preoccupied to reply so a few days later Lippich wrote again peevishly, “I only get indirect news about your doings ... There is no need for me to give you any news of myself, for I have good reason to believe that a great many things are far more important to you than I am^[3].” Indeed, the opportunity to paint an entire family with connections throughout Europe was one that de László was unwilling to let pass, and by nurturing an intimate friendship with the Ratibors he was sure that his reputation would spread far beyond the circle he had known until then. This proved to be the case, and the portrait he painted in Berlin a few months later of the Ratibors’ uncle, the German Chancellor, Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe, was to be the most important and influential work of his early career [4485].

When compiling his memoirs later in his life, de László himself revealed some uncertainty as to which members of the Ratibor family he had painted and when, even confusing the present sitter's name.^[4] It seems likely, however, that in the autumn and winter of 1898-9, he painted, in addition to the “three large portraits,” likenesses of the Duke’s younger daughters, Agathe [11100] and Margarethe [113313], as well as head studies of the Duchess [110716], the Duke's brothers, Max [110771] and Franz [111155], his sister, Margarete [13528] and her husband, Baron Hugo von Reischach [111942], and his sisters-in-law, Maria Agnes [111969] and Ernestine [111510]. De László was clearly especially struck by the “exceptional charm and beauty”^[5] of Princess Leopoldine and while at Rauden he also painted a delicate head study [9050] and a lively sketch of her in a hat [110853]. When she left the Ratibors early in 1899 she took the present portrait to the Lobkowicz castle of Raudnitz (now Roudnice), on the River Elbe in northern Bohemia, to give it to her father.

Princess Leopoldine was born at Kosten (now Košťany, Czech Republic) on 9 March 1867, the daughter of Moritz, 9th Fürst von Lobkowicz (1831–1903), and Marie-Anna, née Princess zu Oettingen-Oettingen und Oettingen-Wallerstein (1839–1912). On 16 November 1885 she married at Raudnitz Prince Egon Moritz von Ratibor und Corvey, Prince zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst (1853–1896), aide-de-camp to Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg. They had four sons, Egon, Ernst, Moritz and Alexander, and two daughters, of whom one, Luise, died in infancy in 1893. After enduring forty years of widowhood, and the loss of her youngest son in the First World War, Princess Leopoldine died at Schloss Oberlauterbach, near Jauer in Lower Silesia (now Jawor, Poland), while staying with her daughter, Maria-Amélie, and son-in-law, Count Rudolf Hoyos.

PROVENANCE:

Schloss Raudnitz from 1899 (no. 859; inv. no. 504);

Thereafter Nelahozeves, until May 2006;

Lobkowicz Palace, Prague

LITERATURE:          

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, p. 174

•DLA140-0072, Die Woche, volume I, Berlin, 18 March 1899, p. 5, ill.

•DLA140-0085, Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, vol. V, Vienna, Artaria & Co., p. 200, ill.

CWS 2008