10549

UNTRACED

Countess di Trani, née Mathilde Ludovika, Duchess in Bavaria 1906

Half length slightly to the right, head turned full face and looking to the left, wearing a dark dress with a high collar

Oil on canvas, [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: László / Tölz 1906 / IX [incised into paint]

This portrait was painted in Bad Tölz, a Bavarian spa town situated on the river Isar, south of Munich. In September 1906 de László, when on holiday in Bavaria, visited Tölz to paint Mathilde, Countess of Trani. At the same time he also made a sepia drawing of her granddaughter Princess Auguste Viktoria [13560]. Lucy de László recounted the visit in her diary: “P. has gone this mg: to Tölz, to make a sketch of Countess Trani - He & I were at lunch there on Tuesday.  She was charming to us, so simple & nice in her manner. Kissed me going away.”^[1] 

Executed only six years after the first portrait of the sitter, this shows a considerably older woman. The sadness apparent in the earlier portrait has become even more profound, maybe reflecting the severe illness of the sitter’s daughter Maria Teresa, Fürstin von Hohenzollern [4448], the mother of Princess Auguste Viktoria, who eventually died in 1909 after years of suffering. Like her sisters, the Countess of Trani also suffered from depression,^[2] see [7363]. According to Rutter, “de László later gave [this portrait] as a wedding present to her granddaughter, Princess Augusta Victoria of Hohenzollern, on her marriage to King Manoel [of Portugal] in 1913.”^[3]

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [7363].

EXHIBITED:

•Kunstsalon Schneider, Frankfurt, October 1906

•Galerie des Artistes modernes, Les Onze, Paris, March 1907
•The Fine Art Society, London, Portraits and Drawings by Philip de László, May and June 1907, no. 42

LITERATURE:

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, n°106, Ph A. von László, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig , 1913, p. 58

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, 1939, pp. 181, 195, 201, 224, 225

•Bestenreiner, Erika, Sisi und ihre Geschwister, Piper Verlag, Munich & Zurich, 2002

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 92

•László, Lucy de, 1902-1911 diary, private collection

•DLA090-0180, Dutch unsere Kunstsalons, Bei Schneider, Frankfurter Neueste Nachrichten, October 1906, page unknown

•DLA096-0186, press cutting, The Graphic, 24 January 1925, p. 22

AG 2011