2596

UNTRACED

Count Albert Apponyi de Nagyappony 1930

Half-length to the left in three-quarter profile to the left, wearing white tie, evening dress, the red sash of the Imperial Order of Leopold across his chest and the star of the Order on his coat, the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece around his neck^[1]

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: A magyar nemzetnek [To the Hungarian Nation] / László / 1930

Sitters' Book II, opp. f. 66: Apponyi Albert Genf 930 / Sept. 26-28

This is the third portrait of Count Albert Apponyi by de László, the artist having previously painted him in 1897 [2438] and 1900 [111921]. It is known only from a colour reproduction. Both works had been executed at Éberhárd, the Apponyi family's country seat near Pozsony,^[2] where de László also painted the sitter's wife on these occasions [111922] & [111923].    

By the 1920s the sitter had become a national hero, and de László was urged to paint him again. In 1928 his friend Pál Majovszky^[3] wrote to him: “Apponyi is the president of the Society for Foreign Affairs. The thought of your painting him has always been dear to me and, knowing that you too have a great regard for our great old man [in English]. I have told Olivér Eöttevényi,^[4] the director of the Society for Foreign Affairs, of my idea. Whether or not he can take up the matter, I will go a step further (naturally in my own name only) until I can attain this objective which is so close to my heart.”^[5] The Hungarian Society for Foreign Affairs duly asked the artist to paint their president.^[6] 

The present portrait was painted in Geneva in 1930, when Apponyi was leader of the Hungarian delegation to the League of Nations. De László replicated almost exactly in this late picture the pose and composition of Apponyi’s 1897 portrait, but his reasons for such a choice remain unexplained. By then aged eighty-four, he was an internationally respected statesman, known in Britain and America as the “Grand Old Man of Central Europe.” De László told a friend and fellow artist, Aladár Edvi Illés, that he painted the portrait in five hours.^[7] He dedicated it to the Hungarian Nation. The original remains untraced, but it is widely known from a poor contemporary colour reproduction.^[8] The portrait was unveiled in the conference hall of Parliament.^[9] After it had been shown at the 1930-31 Jubilee Exhibition in Budapest, it was placed in the Museum of Fine Arts.^[10] There exists a preparatory drawing for the portrait [2595], showing the sitter's head in an identical pose. In September 1933, after the sitter’s death, de László painted a copy of the portrait [111856], which copy was donated by the Hungarian Government to the League of Nations in Geneva.^[11]   

There exists also a copy of the present portrait by Antal Diósy, which was commissioned for the Hungarian Parliament.  In 1949 it was acquired as a gift by the Hungarian National Museum and is now in the Museum's Historical Gallery.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [2438].

EXHIBITED:
•Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Új szerzemények kiállítása, 1926-1931 [Exhibition of New Acquisitions, 1926-1931], opened 21 May 1931, no. 43

•Műcsarnok, Budapest, Jubileumi kiállítás  [Jubilee Exhibition], December 1930-January 1931, no. 26

LITERATURE:

•László, Lucy de, 1930 diary, private collection, 29 September entry, p. 272

•Apponyi, Count Albert, The Memoirs of Count Apponyi, 1935, ill.

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, Hodder and Staughton, London, 1939, pp. 28, 158, 238, 371

•DLA 1928 parcel, Igazságot Magyarországnak [Justice for Hungary], p. 43, ill.^[12]

•DLA032-0071, letter from Pál Majovszky to de László, 5 June 1928

•DLA162-0484, Pesti Hírlap, 28 September 1930, p. 9

•DLA032-0003, letter from Baron Gyula Forster to de László, 3 October 1930

•DLA032-0117, letter from Dr. Géza Lobmayer and Baron József Szterényi to de László, 29 October 1930

•DLA032-0075, letter from Géza Paur to de László, 28 November 1930

•DLA162-0328, Pesti Hírlap, 20 December 1930 [page unknown]

•HNG Archive, letter from de László to Aladár Edvi Illés, 23 December 1930

•DLA032-0086, letter from Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl to de László, 30 December 1930

•DLA162-0356, “A Szépművészeti Múzeum új szerzeményei” [New acquisitions of the Museum of Fine Arts], Pesti Hírlap, 21 March 1931, p. 6

•DLA032-0099, letter from Elek Petrovics to de László, 27 May 1931

•DLA050-0087, letter from de László to Count László Széchényi, 21 October 1933

•DLA135-0018, letter from de László to Marczell ‘Marczi’ László, 20 November 1933

•DLA 1933 parcel, László Fülöp mesterművei a Pesti Hírlap Vasárnapjában [The masterpieces of Philip de László in the Sunday supplement of the Pesti Hírlap], ill.

We are grateful to Dr Gergely Sallay of the Hadtörténeti Múzeum (Museum of Military History), Budapest, for identifying the decorations worn by the sitter.

Pd'O 2011