5294

Max Egon II Fürst zu Fürstenberg 1899

Head and shoulders, turned slightly to the left, looking full-face to the viewer, wearing a wing collar and a jacket with heavy collar just indicated

Oil on board, 70 x 55 cm (29 ½ x 21 ⅝ in.)

Inscribed lower right: Skizze [sketch]: Laszlo. 1899 [in another hand]

Sitters’ Book I, f. 3: Max Egon Fürst zu Fürstenberg, März 99 

Sitters’ Book I, f. 6: In Abwesenheit des Meisters 14/4 99 besuchten folgende hohe Gäste die Stätte stiller Arbeit das Heiligtum der Kunst und besahen die Werke welche “sehr gut in der Farbe sind”^[1] Max Egon

Sitters’ Book I, f. 28: Donaueschingen / Max Egon Fst zu Fürstenberg  24/7 99

Fürstlich Fürstenbergische Sammlungen, Schloss Donaueschingen, Germany

De László painted this portrait of Fürst Max Egon II zu Fürstenberg in Vienna in March or April 1899 as a preparatory work for a three-quarter length portrait of the sitter [3360] commissioned as a pendant to that of his wife Irma, née Countess Schönborn-Buchheim [5297]. The pose is identical to the finished portrait. The artist made a similar head study of the sitter’s wife [5295] and both were given to the couple as gifts.

The three-quarter length portraits of the Fürst and Fürstin were completed at Schloss Donaueschingen in July 1899 and both preparatory studies still hang there alongside a portrait of the Fürst in the uniform of the Garde du Corps [5291].

For biographical notes on the sitter see [3360].

PROVENANCE:

By descent in the sitter’s family

LITERATURE:

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, no. 106, Ph A. von László, Velhagen & Klasing; Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, pp. 52-56

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, 1939, London, pp. 175, 183

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Philip de László. His Life and Art, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2010, p. 58

•Schweers, Hans F., Gemälde in deutschen Museen: Katalog der ausgestellten und depotgelagerten Werke, Saur, Munich, 1994, p. 1047

ATG 2018