2913

Study portrait
Monsignor Zsigmond Bubics, Bishop of Kassa 1896
Half- length, full face to the viewer, his head turned slightly to the left, wearing a white clerical collar, a red clerical robe, a red zuchetto (skull-cap) and a gold crucifix on a long gold chain around his neck.
Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 60.5 cm (29 x 23 ¾ in.)
Inscribed lower right: Nyári S. barátomnak  [to my friend S. Nyári]  / László F.E. / 1896 [red paint]

Sitters' Book I, f. 10: Sigismundus Bubics / Episcopus [on a page with one other date inscription 1899]
Sitters' Book I, f. 13: [on a page inscribed in the artist's hand: Budapest, 1899 / május 8, and apparently signed at the same time by the sitter and four others]: Gr. Szapáry Gyula / Bubics Zsigmond / Fraknói Vilmos / Lippich Elek / Hajnal Márton

Studio Inventory, p. 14 (79): Bishop Bubics. Bishop Bubics is mentioned in the Artist’s Notes for his Memoirs Painted in Budapest.

Private Collection

This painting is one of three portraits of Bishop Bubics painted by de László. An official portrait dated 1896 [110798] hangs in the Archbishop’s Palace in Kassa.^[1] A finished portrait [2908] and finished drawing [2910] dated 1896 of identical composition are in private collections.

The present study portrait was probably painted for the artist's pleasure rather than as a commission. It is inscribed with a dedication to Dr Sándor Nyári (1861-1915), an art historian who was a mutual friend of the Bishop and the artist, and who had just published a monograph on the Bishop’s church, St Elizabeth’s Cathedral in Kassa.^[2] Dr Nyári was the Keeper of the Országos Képtár (National Gallery), the predecessor of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.^[3] This portrait and [2908] were exhibited in 1907 at the Nemzeti Szalon in Budapest, where the present picture was described in the catalogue as the property of Dr Nyári. It is not known when or in what circumstances the portrait was returned to the artist (Dr Nyári died in 1915). The artist kept the portrait until his death.

Lucy de László, the artist's wife described how this portrait was painted in her diary: “The inspired painting it seems, must come without effort, and then the work is telling, thrilling. He is very proud of a picture of Bishop Bubics, now in the exh. at Pest. When he was painting the B. on order, the B. put on his hat and walked out!  P. was so struck with his look in the hat, with his white hair that he asked him - 'nicht nehmen Sie den Hut herunter, ich will Sie so malen' [don't take the hat off, I want to paint you like that] - + he painted it off at one sitting!”^[4] By “hat” the artist’s wife meant the zucchetto (skull cap) that the sitter is wearing in all the three portraits that de László painted of him. 

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [110798].

PROVENANCE:
Dr Sándor Nyári;
In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:
•Nemzeti Szalon, Budapest, April 1907, Exhibition of Works by László Fülöp, no. 6

LITERATURE:

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 99, ill.

•DLA122-0086, Coupures scrapbook, p. 80, ill.
•László, Lucy de, 1902-1911 diary, private collection

Pd’O  2014