110948

UNTRACED

Frau Heinrich von Kuh, née Felicia Rapoport von Porada 1904

Full-face, shoulders turned slightly to the left, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat with an ostrich feather, tied under the chin by a light chiffon scarf, and a light coloured dress with an embroidered bodice, a delicate stole draped about her.

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: László FE. / 1904

The present portrait was probably begun at the beginning of 1904 and would have been on view during the Emperor’s visit to the Paris Salon. In a letter to de László from Berlin, dated 6 February 1904, Heinrich von Kuh asks if he too could be painted during a visit to Vienna in the second half of March. It is not known if this commission was carried out. In the same letter he inquires if the picture of his wife could be finished in time to exhibit it at the Paris Salon that year as “it is already today so splendid and promises so much that I am convinced it would be a huge success for you and you can imagine what a great joy that would be for me.”^[1] The portrait was exhibited in Paris and while there the firm of Braun & Clement made a photographic reproduction of it which met with some criticism from the Kuhs.^[2] Nevertheless some copies of the photogravure were given to friends and relations and in November 1905 this reproduction was used for an illustration in an article about de László in the Italian art magazine Emporium. A photograph shows de László standing proudly beside the finished portrait in the Theresianumgasse studio with his portrait of Angela von Miller-Aichholz and her daughter behind [13477].

‘Fela’ was born Felicia Rapoport in Krakow on 9 February 1873, the third daughter of Arnold Chaim Rapoport (1840-1907) and his wife Laura, née Eibenschitz (c.1850-1904). Arnold Rapoport, born in Tarnow in Galicia, had moved with his family to Krakow as a child. He studied law there and opened his own law-office in 1870. The year after Fela’s birth he was elected to the municipal council of Krakow. In 1877 he became a member of the Galician Diet and in 1879 representative for Galicia in the Reichsrat (Upper House). The family moved permanently to Vienna in 1881. In 1890, Arnold Rapoport was ennobled as Edler von Porada for his work on behalf of Jews in the eastern part of the Empire.

On 15 November 1899 Fela Rapoport von Porada married in Vienna Heinrich Ritter von Kuh (1869-1957), a senior engineer in the Ministry of Railways. They had two children: Madeleine^[3] (b.1900) and Georg Alfred (b.1902).

Heinrich von Kuh’s business often took him abroad and in 1903 he was posted to Berlin. When the de Lászlós moved permanently from Budapest to Vienna in September 1903, it was the Kuhs who rented them their flat in the Theresianumgasse 6 in the fourth district, near the Belvedere Palace. The de László family remained in the Kuhs’ flat until September 1904 when they moved to the nearby Heugasse (now Prinz Eugen Strasse) 12.

De László also had his studio in the house and during that year firmly established his reputation as the foremost portrait painter in Vienna. The address regularly featured in the social columns of the Viennese newspapers owing to the steady stream of prominent visitors to the studio, including, on 5 March 1904, the Emperor Franz Joseph himself,^[4] who came in order to see the progress on de László’s full length posthumous portrait of the Empress Elisabeth [110806].

Both Fela and Heinrich were themselves keen amateur artists, and Fela received some tuition from de László. While in Berlin Fela studied sculpture with Hugo Lederer,^[5] who at the time was working on the massive 15m high statue of Bismarck later erected in Hamburg. After the Kuhs’ return to Vienna Fela became known for her clay portrait busts and delicate architectural drawings, many of which were illustrated in the Wiener Salonblatt, a popular society magazine of the time.

The Kuhs left Austria for England after the arrival of the Germans in Vienna in March 1938 and by 1940 had settled in Barbados where Fela (or Madame de Kuh, as she was best known) soon became established in the flourishing local art scene. Her atmospheric watercolours revealed her delight in the colours of the island and it has been noted that in her pencil drawings “by gradations of tone she almost suggests colour.”^[6] Over the next two decades she became one of the most influential artists on the island. One of her pupils, Fielding Babb,^[7] has described her as a “very small, bony woman, very open [who] would explain to anyone what she was doing – very free.”^[8] Despite the solace she found in Barbados, nonetheless Fela’s heart remained in Vienna. In a review of her memorial exhibition held in 1960, Briggs Clarke wrote: “One heaves a sigh of deep regret at the absence of those marvellous interpretations in pencil of gorgeous baroque architecture, fascinating portrait heads in flowing lines; watercolour interiors which revealed the lush, leisured atmosphere of the rank and wealth of old world charm and dignity.”^[9]

Fela died aged 86 in Christ Church, Barbados, on 11 June 1959, eighteen months after her husband.

EXHIBITED:          

•Paris, Salon de la société des artistes français, 1904, no. 1042

•National Szalon, Budapest, Exhibition of Works by László Fülöp, April 1907, no. 94

LITERATURE:        

•Menasci, Guido, Artisti contemporanei: F.E. László, in: Emporium, Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, Vol. XXII, no. 131, November 1905, p.323 - 336 , ill. p. 325.

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 74

•László, Lucy de, 1902-1911 diary, private collection, 21 May 1903 entry, p. 65

•DLA071-0041, letter from Fela von Kuh to de László, [undated, probably early 1904]

•DLA071-0042, letter from Heinrich von Kuh to de László, 6 February 1904

•DLA124-0002, Lucy de László’s diary, 5 April 1904

•DLA090-0197, press cutting, 1 May 1904, [page unknown]

•DLA162-0233, Pesti Hírlap, 14 May 1904, p. 7

•DLA071-0047, letter from Fela von Kuh to de László, 14 June 1904

•DLA071-0040, letter from Fela von Kuh to de László, 23 June 1904

•DLA071-0045, letter from Fela von Kuh to de László, 6 July 1904

•DLA071-0044, letter from Heinrich von Kuh to de László, 7 July 1904

•DLA066-0110, letter from Gabriel de Térey to de László, 24 January 1906

CWS 2008