Archivist Sandra de Laszlo is married to one of the grandsons of the Hungarian painter Philip de László, who made his career in England and whose work will be seen in January 2004 at an exhibition at Christie’s that she has co-curated and for which she has written the catalogue entries. After assisting with cataloguing for the annual watercolour exhibitions at art dealers Spink’s and then working at the Tate Gallery as a guide, she has been involved for nearly fifteen years in preparing a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work. She talked to Vivienne Menkes-Ivry about a man who was Europe’s most celebrated portrait-painter in the years leading up to the First World War and again in the 1920s and 1930s, but had been largely forgotten until recently.


It seems that one reason why not many people nowadays are familiar with de László’s work is that it rarely comes on to the market. Why is that ?

In fact some interesting pictures are just beginning to come on to the market now, but up to about five years ago his work had very little value. Another reason is that as the likenesses are so brilliant, his portraits have tended to stay in the family – people have always been so fond of them that the children and even grandchildren of the sitters have wanted to keep them. The grand-daughter of one sitter told me she always said goodnight to her grandmother’s picture before she went to bed ! Certainly the good ones have very rarely come on to the market, but with the demographics of life there is an evolution – very few of his sitters are still living and there aren’t many of their children still alive either, but when they come down to the great-grandchildren, they begin to sell. For instance a pair of portraits of Lord Stuart of Findhorn and his wife, who was the daughter of the Duke of Devonshire, were sold a few years ago by his great-grandson. But 90 per cent of the portraits are still in private collections, and certainly all his masterpieces are. He’s got a powerful, but quiet following, and you can expect to find a de László painting, usually a portrait, in every distinguished private collection in the land.


So he’s hardly represented in public collections at all ?

There are twelve of his pictures in the National Portrait Gallery, but they’re very rarely on show – possibly two out of the twelve at any one time. They have had several por traits on loan to 10 Downing Street and various government offices over the years.
There are some at the Courtauld, but they aren’t necessarily on show either. Others are in the public domain because they’re in houses that open to the public. There’s a large collection at Chequers of de László portraits commissioned by Lord and Lady Lee of Fareham, who gave the house to the nation.


What about in Hungary ?

The Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest has some, but there’s only one on show – all the rest are in store. He’s absolutely not appreciated in Hungary, though I’m glad to say that there’s going to be an exhibition of his work at the Ernst Museum in Budapest starting in mid-March – its founder Lajos Ernst was painted by de László. They’ve asked me to be an adviser for the exhibition. But apart from a circle of cognoscenti, he’s largely unknown in his home country.


Was he never appreciated there ?

That’s probably true. Although he did start his training in Budapest, he won scholarships to train in Venice and Munich, and then at the Académie Julian in Paris. After that he went back to Munich, and then a few years after he married his Irish wife – she was a member of the Guinness banking family – he moved first to Vienna and then to London, to a beautiful house in Palace Gate. He was devoted to his home country, but because of the problems of international enmity and because of his prodigious workload, he was rarely able to visit Hungary.


And yet he was enormously successful as a portrait painter of European royalty.

His amazing studio-house in Budapest shows how successful he was at the age of thirty – he had it built as a wedding present for his wife and they were married when he was thirty-one. But he really built up his portrait practice in England and he became a naturalized British citizen and raised five sons here. He virtually stepped into the shoes of John Singer Sargent. He’s been called the “Hungarian Sargent” – not a term I like particularly, though it is helpful in some ways. Sargent was a painter of pictures, a master of the swaggering image, while de László was a painter of likenesses – that was his great achievement. Another difference was that Sargent said of himself that he rarely painted a portrait without losing a friend, whereas according to his biographer Owen Rutter, de László rarely painted one without making a friend.


Did he only paint portraits ?

He painted landscapes and still-life pictures for his own pleasure. Looking at his life, I feel you can say he had “no leisure but landscapes” ! And he did a lot of drawings. In the exhibition we’re going to have a couple of rarely seen early genre paintings from the Hungarian National Gallery, and some landscapes, still-lives, street scenes and animal pictures from his family’s private collections. In my estimation he probably produced about ten thousand paintings and drawings altogether, though so far I’ve only recorded some three thousand of them and I don’t yet know the exact size of the iceberg ! He himself said that he painted 2700 portraits, but from studying his śuvre, I now know that he painted or drew each sitter certainly twice, sometimes three times or even more.


So the catalogue raisonné will be huge. How far have you got with it ?

I started work on it in the early nineties, because I’d begun to have a feeling that as I was in a uniquely fortunate position as a member of the family, I might be able to achieve a proper catalogue raisonné. Then as a result of being invited to co-curate the Christie’s exhibition my work on it has accelerated, because interest is increasing quite intensely as people hear about it. I’ve been emboldened by this to aim to publish in 2007. It’s been really interesting and exciting working with my co-curators Richard Ormond and Christopher Wood and the people who’ve written essays for the catalogue. I’ve learnt a great deal. My own text has been edited by Christopher Wentworth-Stanley and he’s agreed to go forward with me to work towards the 2007 goal for the catalogue raisonné. That will be the hundredth anniversary of de László’s arrival in England and his first one-man show at the Fine Art Society, and the seventieth anniversary of his death in 1937. He died just two days before his last exhibition opened, so it became a sort of sadly self-appointed retrospective.


Is the fact that he died just before the Second World War another reason why he’s so little known ?

Yes. His biography was being written when he died. He’d done a lot of dictating of memoirs and his wife had taken notes, and then Owen Rutter was taken on as biographer before he died. He continued after de László’s death, but the biography came out in 1939, which was a very inopportune moment for a Hungarian artist. I really hope this exhibition and the catalogue will help to re-establish his proper place in the history of European art.


“A Brush with Grandeur – Philip Alexius de László” will be at Christie’s, 8 King Street, St James’s, London SW1, from 6 to 22 January 2004. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition, with over a hundred colour illustrations and essays by Christopher Lloyd, surveyor of the Queen’s pictures, Richard Ormond, Christopher Wood, Suzanne Bailey and Gábor Bellak, curator of nineteenth-century paintings and drawings at the Hungarian National Gallery, will be published by Paul Holberton Publishing. It is sponsored by the Rothermere and Schroder families and the de Laszlo Foundation.