110992

Henriette Maximiliane Countess Schimmelpenninck 1908

Seated half-length with right hand on her chin, wearing a white gown with a chiffon stole and straw hat decorated with flowers and white tulle

Oil on canvas, 65 x 83 cm (25 ⅝ x 32 ⅝ in.)

Inscribed lower right: P.A. Laszlo 1908 II  

Sitters’ Book I, f. 79: Maximiliane Schimmelpenninck [below her mother’s signature: Eugenie Gfn Schimmelpenninck/ geb. Lucius / Haag Jan 1908]

Private Collection

Countess Schimmelpenninck signed the artist’s sitters’ book in January 1908 and her portrait was signed in February that year. The hat she is wearing is most likely to be one de László used for quite a number of his sitters in the first decade of the century, for example, Princess Louise of Battenberg, 1907 [3481] and Madame Randebrock, 1910 [6734].

Countess Henriette Maximiliane was born on 5 September 1889 in Frankfurt am Main. Her father, Count Lodewijk Schimmelpenninck, had settled in Frankfurt after marrying Wally Lucius whose father was the founder of what later became Hoechst the paintworks. The connection here with de László is possibly August de Ridder [111071] who was a director of Hoechst in Frankfurt. In 1914 Maximiliane married in The Hague Simon Freiherr von Bethmann (1887-1966) of the Frankfurt banking house Gebrüder Bethmann. They had two sons and two daughters. Their eldest son Simon was killed in Russia in 1942. Maximiliane died in Frankfurt on 13 January 1966. Her husband died eight months later.

In 1933 de László painted a posthumous portrait of Maximiliane’s uncle Gerard [10633], her father’s elder brother.

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the sitter’s family

LITERATURE:         

•Grever, Tonko and Annemieke Heuft (Sandra de Laszlo, British ed.). De László in Holland: Dutch Masterpieces by Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937), Paul Holberton publishing, London, 2006, pp. 50-2, ill. p. 51

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 116

•László, Lucy de, 1908 diary, 20 February entry, p. 75

CWS 2008