4285

Landscape study

View of the Marienkirche, Großgmain 1935

Oil on canvasboard, 30.8 x 38.4 cm (12 ⅛ x 15 ⅛ in.)

Indistinctly inscribed verso: Austria / GrossGmein [sic] / 1935.aug / PadeL and Hier, lieber Marczi, waren wir zusammen, mit Fülöp, wie er dieses Bild malte. / Lucy M. de László. / Dec.2.1937. [black ink, in Lucy’s hand. The artist had died in November that year]^[1]

Private Collection

In March 1935 de László went back to Budapest after an eight-year absence to paint a second portrait of Admiral Horthy [110886]. After a hectic schedule he resolved to rest a little in the summer and spent June to September in the Austrian and German Alps.  

While staying in Bad Gastein in August he painted this view of the pilgrimage church of St Mary, containing a miraculous Madonna, at Grossmain, some ten miles from Salzburg. His wife Lucy accompanied him, and it would seem from the present inscription that his brother Marczi joined them for a while. De László painted three other landscape studies of Grossmain. Indeed that summer he made quite a number of landscape studies, which were, as ever, painted for his own pleasure.  

PROVENANCE:        

In the artist’s possession on his death;

Bequeathed by his widow Lucy to the artist’s brother, Marczell László;

Sold at Kieselbach Galéria és Aukciósház, Budapest, on 11 December 1999, lot 25

EXHIBITED:        

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur, 6-22 January 2004, no. 134

LITERATURE:

•De Laszlo, Sandra ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 202, ill.

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 167

CWS 2008