110527  

Leonor Matilde Hirsch 1933

Standing three-quarter length to the right, her head turned and looking down to the left, wearing a pink and white organza gown with a flowing stole and a pearl necklace, her hands to her shoulders, against a cloudy sky.

Oil on canvas, 100 x 74 cm (39 ½ x 29 in.)

Inscribed lower left: de Laszlo 1933 / LONDON

Laib L17704 (510) / C12(28)

NPG 1933 Album, p. 9

Sitters’ Book II, f. 75: Leonor Matilde Hirsch July 17th 1933-

Private Collection

This portrait of Leonor Matilde Hirsch was painted with those of her parents Alfred Hirsch [110685] and Elizabeth [10171] in July 1933. The composition of the work seems to have been inspired by de László’s larger portrait of the marquesa del Mérito [13322], which was widely reproduced and well-known in South America. Apart from the open-air setting, the movement of Leonor Hirsch’s head, and her white flowing dress, de László also adopted a very similar palette for the present work.

Elizabeth Gottschalk de Hirsch and de László maintained a correspondence when the family returned to Buenos Aires after the completion of their portraits in the artist’s London studio. Leonor was a frequent topic of discussion, her mother constantly referring to her interests in music, languages, and business as well as looking forward to her marital prospects. On 14 May 1934 she wrote on the eve of her daughter’s nineteenth birthday: “The season of winter […] has just started […] and Leonor and her brothers go out a lot. Leonor has her victims again and again but she has become more serious and reflective and has planned not to flirt this winter but to make a choice. Maybe you will have to paint the Judith-painting sooner than you think!”^[1] Leonor herself added a postscript in English to this letter recalling the painting of her portrait the year before. “My dear Master! I wonder if you still remember the restless and naughty girl which you made so happy with the lovely portrait you made of her and the good and sincere advises [sic] you gave her?  I really think an awful lot of you, and I am still grateful to all what you have given me. I changed a great deal: I am serious and tired of it all- I just want peace now.”^[2] 

Leonor was born in Buenos Aires on 15 May 1915, the youngest child and only daughter of Alfred Hirsch and his wife Elizabeth Gottschalk. Both her parents were born in Germany, but her father had emigrated to Buenos Aires in 1895 to join the grain and foodstuffs firm, Bunge & Born. The family divided their time between the capital and the estancias of Las Lilas and La Elisa in the province of Buenos Aires. Leonor was close to her father and took a keen interest in his work, spending large amounts of time assisting him at his office. She was also a keen linguist and at nineteen years of age spoke several languages, including Russian. She first married Justo José Caraballo (1914-2003), the son of Gustavo Alberto Caraballo Comas and María Carmen Portela Cantilo, by whom she had two children, Octavio (born 1943) and Claudia (born 1944). She was later married to Max-Rudolf Gustav Fritz Leopold von Buch, styled Baron von Buch. He was born in Potsdam, Germany in 1903, the son of Gotthard Erich Karl Leopold von Buch and Elsa (Ellen) von Renvers.

Leonor was deeply committed to celebrating the culture of Argentina, especially in the area of music. In 1947 she founded the Asociación Amigos de la Música, which funded scholarships and promoted the diffusion of classical music through the foundation of a symphony orchestra and the patronage of contemporary music by young Argentine composers. Each year Leonor would personally commission a work by an Argentine composer to be premiered publicly, as was the case with the Sinfonietta for Chamber Orchestra composed by Astor Piazzola in 1953. As a result of her initiative, the work of international contemporary composers like Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Hindemith became known in Argentina and she invited many famous musicians to give public concerts in her country. To this day her Asociación Amigos de la Músic, the Fundación Música de Cámara and the Fundación Leonor Hirsch von Buch continue to support young musicians and singers and the annual Leonor Award,^[3] founded in her memory by her children, Octavio Caraballo and Claudia Caraballo de Quentín, is administered by the Bunge and Born Company, whose expansion owed so much to her father’s directorship.

Leonor Matilde Hirsch died in Buenos Aires on 21 November 1973 aged fifty-eight.

LITERATURE:

DLA035-0125, letter from Elizabeth de Hirsch, with afterword by Leonor, to de László, 14 May 1934

DLA022-0339, letter from Elizabeth de Hirsch to de László, 25 October 1934

DLA022-0336, letter from Elizabeth de Hirsch to de László, 28 March 1935

DLA024-0192, letter from de László to Elizabeth de Hirsch, 19 January 1936

SMdeL 2012