5671

Preparatory work

Ida Kupelwieser 

Three-quarter-length, seated to the left in three-quarter profile on an upholstered yellow chair, wearing a red off-the-shoulder dress, trimmed with white around the neckline

Oil on board, 25.4 x 15.3 cm (10 x 6 in.)

Inscribed lower right: László F. E   

Verso: Two official Hungarian stamps, circular: KIVITELRE ENGEDELYEZVE [blue ink, printed around the circumference] and indistinctly: G’n Weiser [pencil in the artist’s hand]  

Sitters’ Book  I, f. 56: Ida Kupelwieser

Private Collection

Whilst living in Vienna from 1903 until 1907, de László undertook many important commissions. Throughout that time he was also heavily involved in painting a large group portrait of the Kupelwieser family [10429] and the present study was one of some twenty preparatory works made for that portrait.  

Between 1903 and 1905 the artist made a number of individual studies of the family members. An oil sketch of Ida and her father Carl Kupelwieser [10692] remains untraced, another, quite similar in pose to the present work, but more developed [10688], was destroyed after the artist’s death, according to the terms of his will.

Ida Kupelwieser, the elder daughter of Carl Kupelwieser (1841–1925), a distinguished lawyer and philanthropist, and his wife Bertha, née Wittgenstein (1848–1908), was born in Vienna on 7 February 1870. She was the granddaughter of the famous painter Leopold Kupelwieser (1796–1862) and herself a talented amateur painter. In 1926 she married her teacher, Maximilian Lenz (1860–1948), a painter and sculptor and one of the founding members of the Vienna Secession. Barely six months after the wedding Ida died, on 13 April 1927.

For a fuller account of the group portrait and the preparatory works, see [10429]

PROVENANCE:

Purchased in Budapest by the grandparents of the present owner, c. 1960        

AG 2014