111292

UNTRACED

Charles von Morawitz 1904

Seated half length in three-quarter profile to the left, on a Biedermeier chair at a desk, his right hand resting upon it, holding a cigarette, his left hand on his left knee, wearing a dark frock coat, lighter waistcoat, winged collar, and a wedding ring; a statuette (possibly a Winged Victory)^[1] on a cylindrical plinth on top of the desk in front of a draped curtain upper left

Oil on canvas, [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: László F. E. / Vienne / 1904

Sitters’ Book I, f. 67: C Morawitz 31/8 1904

Charles Morawitz was one of the outstanding personalities in the world of finance before the First World War, and an author of note. De László’s close friend, the journalist Sigmund Münz [6377] wrote in his essay on Morawitz: “We are familiar with Morawitz from a portrait of him by Laszlo [sic]. A man whose broad forehead, extending upwards to a rather extensive bald pate, appears to conceal a wealth of ideas. The fingers of his right hand hold a cigarette, and it seems to us as if the blue smoke might soon envelope the author while bright clouds of thought and slender bolts of lightning emanate from his dignified personage. This painting gives us a good impression of the nature of his intellect. In resolute pose he sits there, striving to find and fashion his thoughts, and suddenly they well up in effervescent succession, like medicinal waters from the depths of the earth.”^[2]

Karl Morawitz was born in Triesch bei Iglau (now Třešt / Jihlava, Czech Republic) on 9 March 1846, the son of the merchant Joseph Morawitz (born c.1801) and his wife Sophie, née Beck (1803-1894). His father died when he was still young. After studying in Prague, he began his banking career there before moving to Dresden.

In 1868 Charles (he preferred the French version of his name) joined the bank Bischoffsheim & Bamberger^[3] in Paris, moving in 1870 to the Banque Impériale Ottomane, co-founded by Bischoffsheim’s, but with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War later that year he was forced to move to Vienna.

Returning to Paris in 1871, Morawitz became the secretary, and eventually the right-hand man of the Bavarian financier Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1831-1896) who for some time had been negotiating with the Ottoman government for concessions to build a railway from Vienna to Constantinople. So began Morawitz’s long and close association with Hirsch with the effect that Morawitz became the leading authority on Turkish economics.  Thereafter, although based in Brussels, first as financial director and later administrative director of Hirsch’s Oriental Railways, Morawitz divided his time between Paris and London, where he became an intimate friend of Ernest Cassel, who was painted by de László in 1900 [12023].

He moved permanently to Vienna in 1885. On 11 December 1887 he married in Bucharest Margarethe von Frank (1868/9-1930), the daughter of Demeter von Frank, the Austrian director of the Banque de Roumanie, a daughter company of the Banque Ottomane. They had a son, Edgar, and three daughters. In 1890 Hirsch sold his shares in the Oriental Railway to a consortium dominated by the Wiener Bankverein and the Deutsche Bank, a deal in which Cassel acted as mediator. Morawitz remained on the board as Hirsch’s representative, together with Adolf von Schenk [111023], as Director of the Wiener Bankverein.

In 1893 Morawitz joined the board of the Anglo-Austrian Bank,^[4] in which both Hirsch and Cassel had interests. In 1906 he became President of the bank, a position he held until his death, and under his leadership the Anglo-Austrian Bank became one of the leading financial institutions of Europe.

A journalist for the Frendenblatt-Abendblatt described the man observed by de László when he wrote: “His mode of life was one of the most singular that one can conceive. Accustomed from an early age to make do with little sleep, he would be at his desk before daybreak. There he worked for a few hours, smoking cigarettes incessantly, and having read the newspapers as a rule he would be in the bank already before 8 o’clock … He was a work fanatic in the truest sense of the word, and the meagre hours that he could spare from his extensive and complex business affairs he devoted principally to the appreciation of literature. Thus he became a thorough connoisseur of French and English writers and developed his extraordinary quick wit. Noted for his great intrinsic kindness and a sense of benevolence as is seldom found in this country nowadays, he loved to affect a gruff exterior frame behind which was hidden the best of men and the warmest heart.”^[5] 

In later years Charles Morawitz became well known as a public speaker and author. He published, in addition to his seminal work Les Finances de la Turquie (1902),^[6] several volumes of essays, pamphlets and articles in German, French and English. His health began to fail as a result of years of hard work and heavy smoking. In November 1913 he was ennobled for his services to finance. Two months later, on 12 January 1914, Charles Ritter von Morawitz died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of sixty-seven.

Morawitz had given the present portrait to his friend and colleague, the banker and industrialist Ignaz Petschek (1857-1934) in Aussig an der Elbe (Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic) some time after it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1905. The Petschek family’s extensive property and holdings were confiscated by the Germans in 1939. The family fled to Switzerland and the USA and the present whereabouts of the painting is unknown.

PROVENANCE:  

Presented by the sitter to Ignaz Petschek before 1914

EXHIBITED:           

•Salon de la société des artistes français, Paris, 1905, no. 1102

LITERATURE:  

•Münz, Sigmund, Österreichische Profile und Reminiszenzen, Deutsch- Österreichischer Verlag, Vienna and Leipzig, 1911, pp. 234-5

•Hirsch, Leo (ed.), Der Österreichische Franz Joseph Orden und seine Mitglieder, Biographischer Verlag, Vienna, 1912, ill.(detail) p.42

•Schleinitz, Otto von, Künstler Monographien, n° 106, Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld and Leipzig, 1913, p. 80

•Field, Katherine ed., Transcribed by Susan de Laszlo, The Diaries of Lucy de László Volume I: (1890-1913), de László Archive Trust, 2019, p. 41

•DLA038-0038, letter from Charles Morawitz to de László, [undated, presumably early 1905]

•DLA038-0044, letter from Charles Morawitz to de László, 27 February 1905

•DLA038-0046, letter from Charles Morawitz to de László, 4 March 1905

•DLA122-0021, Coupures Scrapbook, La Revue d’Europe, July 1905

CWS 2008