5650

Chlodwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst 1899

Two-thirds length to the left, seated in three-quarter profile, wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, his hands resting on his knee, all against a dark brown background

Oil on canvas, 92.5 x 72.5 cm (36 ⅛ x 28 ¼ in.)

Inscribed lower right: LÁSZLÓ F.E. / 1899 III ETUDE [red paint]

Sitters’ Book I, f. 4: Fürst z Hohenlohe / Berlin 99. marzius. 15.

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 57: Chlodwig Pr Hohenlohe

Magyar Nemzeti Galéria (Hungarian National Gallery), Budapest

The present portrait of the German Chancellor, Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, was originally commissioned by the sitter’s family for the occasion of the Chancellor's 80th   birthday in March 1899.  

When de László arrived in Berlin he was dismayed to find that the Chancellor’s family had very specific ideas as to how the portrait should look: “standing, as if delivering a speech in the Reichstag.”^[1] The Chancellor was a very small man, barely five foot tall, and bent with age. His appearances in the Reichstag were rare, and, as The New York Times wrote, he was a poor speaker, “some of his important utterances in the Reichstag being barely audible.”^[2] Nevertheless, the Chancellor’s son, Alexander, took the artist to the Parliament to observe the veteran politician. “The Chancellor’s chair was very large and he was hardly visible in it while leaning back and listening to the speakers,” de László wrote. “How different it must have been to see standing in the same place … Bismarck, with his imposing military carriage and magnificent uniform … I imagined the two men beside each other and saw the difference in body and spirit. Hohenlohe dominated the Imperial Parliament by his patience and diplomacy.”^[3] But while de László appeared impressed by what he saw, he felt “to paint him as I saw him would have been impossible, and I came to the conclusion that I must try to avoid doing what I had been asked to do.”^[4] 

The family were insistent, however, and de László began work with a preliminary drawing (untraced) “in the standing attitude and in a redingote … just as I had seen him in the Reichstag, leaning on one hand and gesticulating with the other, and I tried to paint him as far as possible en face, to avoid showing too much of his bent frame.” Despite the artist’s misgivings about the composition, the family were satisfied with the sketches and the next day he began the painting. It would appear that between the preliminary drawing and the portrait de László decided not to paint the Chancellor gesticulating or indeed to attempt to hide his stoop, but to base his composition on an already existing portrait of Hohenlohe, painted three years before by Franz von Lenbach (Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin), in which the Chancellor is shown almost in profile.

After four sittings de László received a letter from the Hungarian Minister of Art and Education, Gyula Wlassics, asking if, while in Berlin, de László could persuade the Chancellor to sit for a second portrait, a head-and-shoulders, for the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest to hang beside their portrait of Bismarck by Lenbach. This gave de László the opportunity to show the Hohenlohe family his original conception for the Chancellor’s portrait, and, having received the Chancellor’s consent, he began the new picture the next day. After the second sitting Hohenlohe agreed that the new version [4485] was preferable to the original, to the artist’s great relief. The Chancellor kept the second version while the first was sent to Budapest where it remains in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery.

For biographical notes on the sitter, see [4485].

PROVENANCE:  

Purchased from the artist in 1899

EXHIBITED:        

•Hungarian Fine Art Society, Budapest, Tavaszi Nemzetközi Kiállítás [Spring International Exhibition], 1899, no. 156

•Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, October 1899 [might also refer to counter no. 4485]

•Paris Salon, Salon de la société des artistes français, 1900, no. 62

•Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1900, no. 76

•Rome, Esposizione Internazionale di Belle Arti (Hungarian Section), 1911, no. 117

LITERATURE:

•Térey, Dr. Gabriel von, “A Hungarian Portrait Painter: Philip de László,” The Studio, Vol. 40, No. 170, 1907, pp. 254-67, ill. p. 259

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, no. 106. Ph. A. von László, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, p. 33,  ill. pl. 36 (detail only)

•Rutter, Owen, Portrait of a Painter, London, 1939, pp. 168-174, 184

•Hart-Davis, Duff, in collaboration with Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, De László: His Life and Art, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 54-55

•DLA090-0254, German press cutting, [undated, page unknown]

•DLA091-0154, German press cutting, [undated, page unknown]

•NSzL150-0068, letter from de László to Elek Lippich, 3 March 1899
•DLA066-0103, letter from Gábor de Térey to de László, 7 December 1903
•DLA066-0099, letter from Gábor de Térey to de László, 7 June 1906

•DLA140-0168, L’Illustration, n˚ 3321, 20 October 1906, p. 257, ill.
•DLA103-0077, Press cutting, New York Times Magazine, 9 May 1926
•DLA002-0064 letter from Marie de Sásór-Bardzka to de László, [undated]

CWS 2007