112282

VERSO

Preparatory work

Count Leopold Berchtold 1907 

Standing half-length to the left, full face looking towards the right, wearing a Díszmagyar, a dark blue, high collared tunic, a white collar just visible underneath, a gold belt, his left hand on his hip

Oil on board, 69.8 x 49.5 cm (27 ½ x 19 ½ in.)

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 41: Gróf Berchtold Lipót / osztr. magyar pétervári nagykövet [Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to St. Petersburg] 1907. 28./2.

Private Collection

The formal portrait, for which this is a preparatory sketch, was painted in 1907 and was one of the last that de László painted in Vienna [110438]. That formal portrait was obviously of some considerable importance to the artist as it is illustrated both in von Schleinitz’s Künstler Monographien, vol. 106, published in 1913; and in Oakley Williams’s  Selections from the work of P.A. de Laszlo, published in 1921.

The sitter has signed the artist’s Sitters’ Book with the Hungarian version of his first name, though he more commonly went by Leopold.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [110438].

Recto is a study portrait of Chief Medicine Eagle [6303].

PROVENANCE:        

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:        

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies By Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1924, n° 48

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur. 6-22 January 2004, n° 95

LITERATURE:         

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 160, ill.

•DLA116-0011, Letter from Louis Reihersoly (on behalf of Gilbert Miller) to de László, 4 September 1923

CWS & CC 2008