110509

Countess Camillo Stubenberg, née Countess Gabriele Breunner-Enkevoith 1902

Seated three-quarter length slightly to left, head turned full face to the viewer, wearing a white chiffon evening dress, a cape with black sleeves and gold lamé cuffs and collar, a pearl necklace and miniature pearl choker and emerald earrings

Oil on canvas, 108.5 x 77.5 cm (42 ¾ x 30 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower right: László F.E. / 1902 / v. Vienne

Sitters’ Book I, f. 54: Elsa Stubenberg Breunner

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 55: Camillo Gf Stubenberg 6.2.902

Private Collection

The sitter was born at Grafenegg in Lower Austria on 29 December 1875, the youngest of the six daughters of August, Count Breunner-Enkevoith (1828–1894) and his wife Agathe, née Countess Széchényi (1833–1920). On 25 May 1901 she married Camillo Herr und Graf von Stubenberg (1861–1950) in Vienna.

Little is known about the circumstances of this commission, except that the sitter’s eldest sister Maria ‘Mitzi,’ Duchess of Ratibor, had already been painted by de László in 1899 [110797]. Another sister Eleonore, Princess Auersperg, was possibly also painted.^[1]

At the time the present portrait was made in May 1902, the sitter was expecting her first child Wolfgang (born 18 September 1902) and had her lady’s maid Kathi Fuschek (died 1947/8) sit instead of her for the body of the portrait. Gabriele Stubenberg had two more children, a daughter and a son. She died at Schloss Walkersdorf in Lower Austria on 27 July 1950, three months after her husband and the day before her youngest son.

A head study of the sitter [111154], also dated 1902, remains in the same collection.

LITERATURE:

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, p. 92

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, pp. 54, 56

•DLA090-0089, article, Pester Lloyd, 21 June 1902 

CWS 2008