Countess Maria Wydenbruck-Esterházy 1904

Head-and-shoulders in profile to the right, her head turned in three-quarter profile, her hair up in a chignon, wearing pearl drop-earrings, a necklace, a white chiffon or organza dress just indicated

Oil on board, 73 x 51 cm (28 ¾ x 20 in.)

Indistinctly inscribed lower right: László F.E. / Vienne 904 Sitters’ Book I, f. 58: Gfin Misa Wydenbruck-Esterházy [above her daughter Tinette Wydenbruck’s signature and among signatures dated 1902]

Maria ‘Misa’ Wydenbruck was born in Vienna on 8 May 1859, the daughter of Count Ferenc Esterházy de Galántha (1829-1861) and his Viennese wife Aloysia, née Ross (1835-1894). On 9 September 1883 she married in Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia) Count August Wydenbruck (1857-1905). They had two daughters and a son.

As a young woman she studied singing with Mathilde Marchesi, the teacher of Nellie Melba and Emma Calvé, and later appeared in the Austrian writer Alexander Baumann’s play “Versprechen hinterm Herd.” She was a great admirer of Wagner and every year travelled to Bayreuth for the festival.

An early protégé of Princess Pauline Metternich, of whom de László also painted a similar study at around the same time as the present portrait [110466], from 1906 she was vice-president of the princess’s charity fundraising committee, and as a loyal supporter of the princess in all her activities, earned a widespread reputation for her tireless charitable work and from Karl Kraus the nickname “General Pauline’s working adjutant.”[1] One of the outstanding personalities of pre-war Viennese society and herself a writer, she was also well known in literary and musical circles, and included among her friends Gustav Mahler, his brother-in-law the violinist Alfred Rosé (who played at her funeral) and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Bruno Walter described her as “my loyal friend. The charm of this graceful, vivaciously cheerful, slender and elegant woman was pronouncedly Austrian and typical of her class.”[2] She also became friends with Arthur Schnitzler and, during his stay in Vienna from 1897 to 1899, Mark Twain.

Her niece, the writer Nora Purtscher-Wydenbruck (1894-1959), described her as “the prettiest and most graceful person I knew – even her short-sightedness added to her charm.”[3]

She died in Vienna after a long illness, aged sixty-seven, on 29 August 1926.

PROVENANCE: Probably to the sitter’s eldest daughter, Klementine (Tinette) von Ružičić; National Gallery Prague; Sold at auction at Frank Peege Auktionscontor, 21 April 2007, lot 1233