111899

UNTRACED

Doctor Max ‘Miksa’ Falk 1901

Head and shoulders full face to the viewer, wearing a black jacket, a white shirt, the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary just indicated at his neck

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Sitters’ Book I, f. 49: Dr. Falk Miksa [among signatures dated 1901]

This study was probably painted as a preparatory work for the finished portrait of 1901 [111093]. The pose and dress are identical in both pictures. De László also painted the sitter’s wife, née Klementina Schindler [111547], in 1901 possibly as a pendant for the finished portrait.  

Preparatory studies were sometimes given by de László to favourite sitters as a momento of their sittings. There is no record in the artist’s archive to indicate this was the case and the painting remained in a Hungarian collection and is known only from a photograph in the archive of the Hungarian National Gallery.  

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [111093].

BS 2020