110766

Count Heinrich von Larisch-Moennich 1905

Almost full length slightly to the right, full-face, wearing a black tailcoat with black silk facing, black waistcoat, white stock with gold tie pin, brown chamois jodhpurs, riding boots; gloves in his right hand, in his left a black silk top hat and riding crop; lower left, a foxhound and a gold brocade curtain behind, all against a grey/green/brown background

Oil on canvas,^[1] 199 x 117 cm (78 ¾ in. x 46 in.)

Inscribed lower right: László F.E / 1905

Sitters’ Book I, f. 55: Gräfin Sternberg Larisch^[2]   15.I.1902

Sitters’ Book I, f. 55: Heinrich Grf. Larisch “  “ [referring to the signature of his son above: Fritz Grf. Larisch 15. II. 1902]

Sitters’ Book I, f. 59: Larisch

Private Collection

The appearance of the present portrait of Count Heinrich Larisch von Moennich probably owes much to the sitter himself. He was a great rider and huntsman, and several other portraits show him dressed for hunting with a hound at his heel. A preliminary sketch [5456] shows the head full-face as here but lit from the other side, and verso a full composition study shows the head slightly more to the right and the hound absent [112281]. That board is dated 1902, and Larisch signed the artist’s sitters’ book on 15 February 1902. The heavy, overworked handling of several passages of paint and the cracked surface covering alterations in the finished portrait suggest that the work of the following three years was difficult for de László. According to the sitter’s descendants, Count Larisch rarely left his Silesian estates, except to go hunting, and there is no evidence of de László working in Austrian Silesia between 1902 and 1905 (although in 1904 he painted Prince Carolath in Lower – German – Silesia). Correspondence from the sitter suggests the portrait was begun in the Palais Larisch in the Johannesgasse in Vienna; later the sittings took place at the artist’s studio in the Wohllebengasse. The brocade curtain in the background of the present portrait can also be seen in the double portrait of the Archduchesses Henriette and Maria Anna [11301] which is inscribed Vienne 1905. This curtain also appears in a studio photograph of that period.

A letter dated 26 December 1904 suggests that de László was unhappy with the picture and tried to persuade Count Larisch to pose in a red hunting coat (the 1902 sketch shows him in  grey), although the Count points out “there are already rather a lot of albeit insignificant pictures”^[3] of him in his red coat. Another undated letter^[4] shows that the hound was brought especially to Vienna to be painted. When the portrait was eventually finished, Count Larisch expressed his pleasure and thanks “for the trouble you took and for the forbearance and patience with the ‘restless model’”^[5] and transferred 12,000 Kronen to the artist’s account. In the same letter, however, he writes: “Unfortunately you will have to wait until next year to paint my daughter-in-law.” Presumably this was because his second son Fritz’s wife, Marie Luise, née Countess von Beroldingen, was expecting a baby.^[6] It is not known if this commission was ever carried out.

In 1904 de László painted a head sketch of the sitter’s daughter Eleonore [110807], later Countess Ledebur, and possibly a finished portrait of her known as ‘The Lady with the Star’ is in the Czech Republic.

Count Heinrich von Larisch-Moennich was born at Ebelsberg near Linz on 13 February 1850, the son of Count Johann Larisch-Moennich (1821-1884) and his wife Franziska, née Baroness Kast von Ebelsberg (1828-1902). On 25 November 1871 he married in Bucharest his first cousin Henriette (1853-1916), the daughter of Count Leo Larisch and his Romanian wife Helene, née Princess Stirbey. They had three sons and two daughters.

Count Larisch was an outstanding horseman and, together with Prince Rudolf Liechtenstein [110972] and Count Tassilo Festetics [111493], was one of the Empress Elisabeth’s [7857] favoured riding companions. He first rode to hounds at the age of fifteen and over the next fifty-three years took part in over three thousand hunts. He hunted not only with his own pack of hounds at Karwin, in Austrian Silesia, and in Bohemia with the famous Pardubitz Hunt (of which he was Master from 1877), but also in England, Ireland, Hungary and in the Campagna outside Rome. His stud at Karwin was the largest in Austria with four thoroughbred stallions and a hundred and twenty mares. In his stables were no less than fifty-four hunters for himself and his family.^[7] He was also active on the racecourse and for many years sat on the Committee of the Austrian Jockey Club.

The Larisch fortune came from mining. The estates at Karwin, around the family’s main residence Schloss Solza, Steman and Tzerlitzka were rich in coal and after taking these over Count Larisch’s regular improvements and modernisation of his mine workings led to a threefold increase in coal and coke production. Further industrial interests included adapting a soda factory founded by his grandfather in 1852 (the 2nd oldest in Austria) into a modern chemical works and the development of zinc white production. From 1890 he was president of the Society of Mining, Iron and Machinery Industrialists in Austria and in 1897 was the co-founder and, until his death, president of the Association of Austrian Mine Owners.

On the death of his father in England in 1884 he took his seat as hereditary member of the Austrian House of Lords and at the same time was elected to the Silesian Diet as one of the representatives of the great landowners. From 1886 until his death he was Landeshauptmann (Governor) of Silesia, an office also held by his father from 1861 until 1864.

On 8 December 1918, a month after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, while riding a white horse through a mob of striking mineworkers, Count Larisch suffered a fatal heart attack.

At the end of the Second World War Schloss Solza was burned in unexplained circumstances, but the present painting was saved, despite its size, and moved to an estate manager’s house. When the estates were expropriated, the family were able to take the portrait to the Palais in the Johannesgasse in Vienna, where it hung until that was sold in 1973.^[8] From Vienna the painting was taken to a hunting lodge in Palfau in Styria, for which it proved too large to hang so was stored in the attic (during unpacking after this move the painting was damaged by a careless removal man with a bill hook). When, ten years later, the house at Palfau had to be demolished as part of a road-widening project, the portrait was brought back to Vienna, repaired and hung once more.

EXHIBITED:

•Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Künstlerhaus Annual Exhibition, 1906, no. 1303

LITERATURE:        

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de Laszlo Archive Trust, 2019, p. 84, ill.

•DLA031-0130, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, [undated]

•DLA031-0139, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, [undated]

•DLA031-0142, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, [undated]

•DLA031-0143, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, [undated]

•DLA031-0131, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, 24 June 1904

•DLA031-0138, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, 26 December 1904

•DLA031-0137, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, 31 December 1904

•DLA031-0129, letter from Heinrich Larisch to de László, 12 August 1905

•László, Lucy de, 1902-1911 diary, 24 June 1905 entry, p. 86

•DLA140-0212, Térey, Dr. Gabriel von, “A Hungarian Portrait Painter: Philip de László,” The Studio, vol. 40, no. 170, May 1907, pp. 254-67

•DLA019-0102, letter from István (“Stephen”) Bárczy to de László, 14 June 1930

CWS 2005