Philip de Laszlo

Biography of Philip de Laszlo ( 1869-1937 )

Laub Fülöp was born on 30 April 1869 in Pest, Hungary, into a modest tailor's family, the eldest of seven children. Supported by his hard-working nature, he initially trained as a decorator and porcelain painter before joining the studio of the famous portrait photographer Sándor Strelisky in 1884. This enabled him to support his mother and siblings, as his father had disappeared from family life. While fulfilling his three-year contract, the young boy entered the Budapest School of Applied Arts in 1884, then the School of Drawing in 1886, where he won his first state scholarship.

At just 16, this award enabled him to enter the Academy of Arts, where he studied under Bertalan Székely and Károly Lotz between 1885 and 1889. He then attended the Royal Bavarian Academy of Arts in Munich (1889-90 and 1891-92), under Professor Sándor von Liezen-Mayer, interspersed with a period at the Académie Julian in Paris (1890-91) under Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant.

Along with his brother Marczi, he chose to take the Hungarian name of László in 1891 out of patriotism, like many of his compatriots claiming their identity within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

During his formative years, László devoted himself to history and genre painting, but his first portrait commissions came as early as 1889, notably from Dr Pál Galambos (formerly Grünbaum), an influential lawyer from Ó-Becse in the Hungarian countryside. His first royal commission came in 1894 from his friend Alexius de Lippich, secretary of the Fine Arts Department of the Hungarian Ministry of Education, to paint the Bulgarian royal family. This was followed by a portrait of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1899 and a commission from Queen Victoria to paint General Sir George White in 1900.

The year 1900 marked a turning point in the portrait painter's career. László painted members of the German imperial family and travelled to Rome in the spring to paint Pope Leo XIII. This painting was awarded the Grand Gold Medal at the Paris International Exhibition and contributed to his international reputation. He was finally able to marry Lucy Guinness, whom he had met while studying in Munich eight years earlier. The young couple first settled in the studio house that László had built in Budapest, before moving to Vienna in 1903 and then to England in 1907. Together they had five sons, Henry, Stephen, Paul, Patrick and John.

De László consolidated his reputation throughout the world in the first decade of the twentieth century. In France, he made the acquaintance of the Count and Countess de Castellane and Armand de Gramont, who were to be of great support to him throughout his career. Orders poured in and he received one award after another. He was made a member of the Royal Victorian Order by King Edward VII in 1909, and was granted British nationality in 1913.

The painter, recognised as one of the most illustrious portraitists of the crowned heads and aristocracy of the whole of Europe, was ennobled by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1912, who conferred on him the title of Sir Philip Alexius de László de Lombos. At the time of his death in 1937, he held twenty-two orders and seventeen medals of merit awarded by royal and presidential figures.

His great patron, Lord Selborne, summed up his extraordinary achievement with the phrase "Has any single painter ever painted so many interesting and historic characters?"