Philip de Laszlo

Biography of Philip de Laszlo ( 1869-1937 )

Philip Alexius de László was one of the most celebrated portraitists of his age, whose work today forms a veritable gallery of the political, aristocratic, and intellectual elites of Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.

Born in Pest into a modest Jewish family—his father being a tailor—he was the eldest of seven children. From an early age he aspired to become an artist and pursued his ambition with remarkable determination. He initially trained as a decorator and painter on porcelain and faience, and in 1884 entered the studio of the portrait photographer Sándor Strelisky. This experience allowed him to help support his family after his father had left the household. At the same time, he attended the Budapest School of Applied Arts, also in 1884, and later the School of Drawing in 1886, where he obtained his first state scholarship.

Thanks to this distinction, he was admitted at the age of sixteen to the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, where he studied between 1885 and 1889 under Bertalan Székely and Károly Lotz. He continued his training at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich (1889–1890 and 1891–1892) in the studio of Sándor von Liezen-Mayer, a period interrupted by a year at the Académie Julian in Paris (1890–1891), where he worked under Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant. In 1891, in a gesture of patriotism shared by many of his Hungarian contemporaries within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he and his brother Marczi adopted the Magyarized surname László.

During his formative years the young artist devoted himself to history and genre painting, yet it was in portraiture that he soon revealed his exceptional talent. His first portrait commissions appeared as early as 1889, notably that of Dr Pál Galambos, an influential lawyer from the region of Ó-Becse.
His first royal commission came in 1894, when, through the intermediary of his friend Alexius de Lippich, he was invited to paint members of the Bulgarian royal family. This success was followed by prestigious commissions including the portrait of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1899 and, in 1900, a commission from Queen Victoria to paint her favoured general, Sir George White.

The year 1900 marked a decisive turning point in his career. After painting several members of the German imperial family, László travelled to Rome to paint Pope Leo XIII. The portrait was widely acclaimed and earned him the Grand Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, firmly establishing his international reputation. That same year he married Lucy Guinness, whom he had met eight years earlier during his studies in Munich. The couple would have five sons: Henry, Stephen, Paul, Patrick, and John.

After initially living in the house-studio the artist had built in Budapest, the family settled in Vienna in 1903 before moving to England in 1907. Installed in London, László quickly consolidated his international reputation. In 1909 King Edward VII appointed him a member of the Royal Victorian Order, and he obtained British citizenship in 1913. The previous year, Emperor Franz Joseph had ennobled him under the title Philip Alexius de László de Lombos.

During the first decades of the twentieth century he became one of the most sought-after portraitists in Europe, portraying monarchs, heads of state, aristocrats, diplomats, and prominent figures of his time. In France he counted among his supporters the Count and Countess de Castellane and Armand de Gramont. Heir to the great tradition of state portraiture, he renewed its brilliance through remarkable technical virtuosity and a measured modernity, reconciling academic discipline with a more fluid pictorial sensibility.

At the time of his death in 1937 his fame remained extraordinary: he held no fewer than twenty-two orders and seventeen medals of merit bestowed by royal and presidential patrons. His patron Lord Selborne aptly summarized the scale of his achievement: “Has any one painter ever painted so many interesting and historic personages?”