11978

Still Life

Mimosa Flowers and Foliage with an Orange set on a White Cloth 1937

Still life of mimosa flowers and foliage with an orange on a white cloth, the flowers in a glass vase, the orange still attached to its branch and leaves lying beside

Oil on canvasboard, 50 x 40.5 cm (19 ¾ x 16 in.)

Inscribed lower right: de László 1937   

Private Collection

Having suffered from ill health in the summer of 1936, de László’s doctor ordered him to rest and not to return to London in the autumn. Philip and Lucy decided to spend the winter at Villa Les Brises, Cap Ferrat in the south of France where he convalesced, having been told not to exhaust himself by painting more than four days a week.

Seven fine still-life paintings and a number of vivid landscapes survive from this period. For a fuller account, see [11783].

Among those seven, there exists a very similar composition to the present work, using possibly the same spray of mimosa flowers and foliage in a vase set on a mirrored tray [13194]. That other painting was exhibited at de László’s last exhibition, at Wildenstein’s in Bond Street, London, which opened two days after the artist’s death on the 22 November 1937. The whereabouts of the present work before 1986 remains unknown.

The present painting was sent by de László to Hungary as a prize in a lottery to raise funds for a memorial to the famous painter Mihály Munkácsy (1844-1900).^[1]  He was an early hero of de László, who was honoured to serve as a torch bearer at his funeral.

PROVENANCE:

Sold at auction at BÁV, Hungary, Auction 70, September 1986, lot 106;

The Salgo Trust, from Sept. 1986, until de-accessioned in 2002;

Sold at auction at Kieselbach Gallery, Budapest, 11 September 2002, lot 170

LITERATURE:  

•Two Centuries of Hungarian Painters 1820-1970. A Catalogue of the Nicolas M. Salgo Collection, American University Press, Washington 1991, ill. pl. 87, p. 100
•DLA038-0030, letter from de László to Lajos Gyenes de Szentgyörgyvár, 16 August 1937

SMdeL & SdeL 2013