11229

History picture

Felicián Zách and his Daughter Klára 1896

Felicián Zách standing by a table in a medieval interior, his left hand clutching his sword, staring to the right, his daughter weeping at his feet, holding his robe with her left hand, her right covering her face

Oil on canvas, 217 x 157 cm (85 ½ x 61 ¾ in.)

Inscribed lower right: 1896 László F 

Private Collection

De László first decided on portraying the subject of Felicián Zách in 1895, when he painted a preliminary version [111172], now in the Déri Museum in Debrecen. In 1896 he made a preparatory study [7779], quite different from the present version, and a head and shoulder study [110924], which shows similarities to the finished painting. The subject was very much in keeping with the spirit of the Millennium celebrations, and he may have chosen it to establish his claim as a history painter to rival Orlai Petrich and Madarász, who had previously painted Zách and his daughter. He made thorough preparations for this work. In his reminiscences, he recorded that “I studied the costumes very carefully and had them specially made, also the furniture, of which I still possess the table, all in the style of the period.”^[1] The picture was bought at the Millennium Exhibition by a Mr Sárkány for 1000 Florins and was later taken to London to be sold, where Lucy records seeing it in 1920: “We went to Prichard in aft: to see ein Jugendarbeit^[2] of his, painted when he was 25 – a fallen girl disclosing her secret to her enraged Father – This was brought to London to sell by Baron Gerliczy.”^[3]

Felicián Zách (or Záh) was a leading Hungarian nobleman in the early 14th century. His daughter Klára was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Polish wife of King Robert Charles of Hungary, who reigned from 1308 until 1342. The King was from the Neapolitan House of Anjou. He inherited the Hungarian throne when the indigenous line of Hungarian kings from the House of Árpád died out. It is recorded that on 17 April 1330 Felicián Zách attempted to kill the royal family, bursting in on them while they were dining at the castle of Visegrád. The Queen in attempting to shield the King had four of her fingers cut off. Zách was then quickly overpowered and killed by the King’s attendants. Subsequently, terrible vengeance was exacted on Felicián Zách’s family. His kinsmen to the third generation were killed, including his son and his elder daughter. Klára was hideously mutilated, paraded around on horseback and forced to declaim: “This is the punishment for treason against the King.” The painting depicts the scene when the weeping Klára tells her father about the rape. Her father’s expression is one of rage and horror.

The incident is recorded and also illustrated in an illumination in the “Képes Krónika” (Illustrated Chronicle), a codex written in the mid-1370s in the reign of King Louis the Great, the son of Robert Charles.^[4] The reason for Zách’s attempt on the life of the royal family is not recorded there, but later an Italian chronicler hostile to the Queen, writing in 1344 when she visited Naples, revealed the rumour that the Queen had encouraged her brother Prince Casimir to seduce Klára when he was visiting the Hungarian Court. In fact the Queen was reputedly a woman of strict morals who is unlikely to have acted as a procuress for her brother,^[5] who later reigned as King Casimir the Great of Poland.  

Nevertheless, the legend persisted and was revived in 19th century Hungarian literature and art. The tragic story of Zách and his daughter appealed to national sentiment, as Robert Charles and his Queen were foreigners and had surrounded themselves with foreign courtiers. The episode became the subject of dramas written in 1858 and 1864, of a poem in 1845 by Sándor Petőfi, the great poet of the 1848 War of Independence, and of a ballad by János Arany. The subject was painted in 1858 by Viktor Madarász and in 1860 by Soma Orlai Petrich; both pictures are in the Hungarian National Gallery.

After the failure of the War of Independence in 1849, political opposition to foreign rule could only be expressed indirectly, in art and literature. History painting in particular was an important path for the expression of patriotic nationalist sentiment in mid-nineteenth century Hungary. It was not merely following the fashion for history painting in the Academies of Munich and Vienna, but carried a deeper significance of resistance to oppression.^[6] The Millennium Celebrations in 1896, recalling the one thousandth anniversary of the conquest and settlement of the Carpathian Basin, naturally led to an increased preoccupation with the glorious events of Hungarian history and stimulated nationalist sentiment and patriotism. The celebration was a predominantly cultural event in which artists played an important part. De László who was a strongly patriotic Hungarian became a very active participant.

According to von Schleinitz, de László “was at that time repeatedly preoccupied with the historical events of his fatherland and also had to undertake studies of the localities where these events had occurred.”^[7] In 1894, with the approach of the Millennium Celebrations his mentor Elek de Lippich (Head of the Department of Fine Arts in the Ministry of Education) urged de László to turn his talent to history painting. De László considered painting a scene of Miklós Zrínyi, a hero of the wars against the Turks, taking leave from his family before his sortie from the besieged castle of Szigetvár in 1566. However, after a somewhat sarcastic letter from Lippich, pointing out that Zrínyi was in fact not a Magyar but a Croat, de László abandoned this project.^[8] The following year he was commissioned by the government to go to Dresden to make a copy of Ádám Mányoki’s portrait of Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II, one of Hungary’s greatest national heroes, who led an uprising against Habsburg rule in the early years of the eighteenth century [6724]. The county of Zemplén in north-eastern Hungary also commissioned de László to paint a portrait of Rákóczi [6727], which he completed in 1896. Another county, Szabolcs, requested him to paint a posthumous portrait of Lajos Kossuth, leader of the 1848-49 War of Independence, who had died in exile in Turin in 1894. However, he did not undertake this task.  

PROVENANCE:        

Mr. Sárkány of Budapest;

Baron Félix Gerliczy;

Mr John Hall

EXHIBITED:

•Műcsarnok, Budapest, Millennium Exhibition, 1896, no. 687, ill. (4000 Ft)

LITERATURE:

•Vasárnapi Lapok, 12 December 1897, pp. 665-672, p. 37, ill.

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien Ph A.v. László, Bielefeld and Leipzig, (Velhagen & Klasing), 1913, p. 35

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1939, pp. 150-151

•Clifford, Derek, The Paintings of P.A. de Laszlo, Literary Services & Production Ltd., London, 1969, pl. 14

•Sandra de Laszlo, ed., and Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2004, p. 78, fig. 55

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 45, ill. 22

•Hart-Davis, Duff, László Fülöp élete és festészete [Philip de László's Life and Painting], Corvina, Budapest, 2019, ill. 22

•Field, Katherine ed., Gábor Bellák and Beáta Somfalvi, Philip de László (1869-1937); "I am an Artist of the World", Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2019, p. 16, ill. pp. 8, 17, 22

•Field, Katherine, with essays by Sandra de Laszlo and Richard Ormond, Philip de László: Master of Elegance, Blackmore, 2024, p. 41

•DLA140-0025, Új Idők, Budapest, 17 May 1896, p. 37, ill.

•DLA140-0028, Budapest Képes Politikai Napilap, volume XX, issue 243, Budapest, 4 September 1896, front cover.

•DLA140-0030, Vasárnapi Újság, volume 43, issue 33, Budapest, 1896, p. 544, ill.

•László, Lucy de, 1920 diary, private collection, 3 May entry, p. 124

•DLA020-0022, letter from de László to Dr László Siklóssy, 25 September 1935

Pd’O 2011