13701

Baron Otto von Schleinitz 1913

Head and shoulders in three-quarter profile to the right, wearing a dark coat

Oil on board, 72 x 50.5 cm (28 ⅜ x 19 ⅞ in.)

Inscribed lower left: meinem verehrten Freund / in Verehrung [to my honoured friend in admiration] / 1913 Xmas P.A de László 

Laib L7276^[1] (622) / C 24 (11): originally labelled Baron Schroeder by P László;  later Baron Schlienitz [sic]

NPG Album 1903-1914, p. 38

NPG Album 1912-1916, p. 19, where labelled “He wrote my life for Seemann^[2] / in Leipzig”/ Died in 1916

Private Collection

This portrait was painted at Christmas 1913 as a pendant to a head study of the sitter’s wife Baroness Schleinitz that de László had made in 1911 [13541]. Both portraits were  probably presented to von Schleinitz as a token of gratitude for his  monograph on the artist, published in the same year.

Baron Otto von Schleinitz was born in Berlin on 26 April 1839, the eldest child and only son^[3] of Baron Julius von Schleinitz (1806-1865), the president of the provincial government^[4] of Bromberg and later of Trier, and his wife Jenny von Schwendthoff (1802-1888), the adopted daughter of Johann Rühle von Lilienstern.^[5] After school he went into the army. In 1864 he was a second lieutenant in the 3rd Royal Prussian Regiment of Foot Guards. By 1871 during the Franco-Prussian War he was a Captain and Company Commander in the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards but later transferred to the 1st Hessian Infantry Regiment No. 81. An uncle of the sitter, Alexander von Schleinitz (1807-1885), was appointed Prussian Foreign Minister three times between 1848 and 1861, and was created Count von Schleinitz in 1879.

On 24 July 1872, in Berlin, Otto von Schleinitz married the widow Clara Fischer, née Loth (1834-1919), who had distinguished herself during the Franco-Prussian war as a field hospital superintendent. Schleinitz resigned from the army in 1874 and thereafter devoted himself to the study of the arts, books and antiquities. Around 1900 he and his wife moved to London and Schleinitz began a series of monographs on British artists, including Burne-Jones (1901), Walter Crane (1902), G.F. Watts (1904) and Holman Hunt (1907) for the Leipzig publisher, Velhagen & Klasing.^[6] The last of these, published in April 1913, was devoted to de László, the first and most detailed description of the artist’s life up to that time, and richly illustrated. Earlier he had published an extended essay on de László’s work in Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte XXVII Jahrgang 1912/13. Schleinitz also published Aus den Papieren der Familie von Schleinitz (Berlin, 1905) and works on the art treasures of Trier (1909) and London (1912).^[7]

After the outbreak of war between Britain and Germany in 1914 the couple remained in London, where Baron Otto von Schleinitz died on 8 May 1916.

PROVENANCE:

Sold Bonhams Knightsbridge, 20 May 2003, lot 20;

Private collection

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. 226

CWS 2017