Philip de Laszlo : his life and art

Böcker. New Haven : Yale University Press. 2010.

Philip de László (1869-1937) was the pre-eminent portrait artist working in Britain between 1907 and 1937. He painted nearly 3,000 portraits, including kings and queens, four American presidents and countless members of the European nobility. There has been no biography of him since 1939, and this new account of both his life and his work draws on previously untapped material from the family archive of over 15,000 documents. It establishes the intrinsic importance of his art and re-positions him alongside his great contemporaries John Singer Sargent, Sir John Lavery and Giovanni Boldini. Born into a humble family in Budapest in 1869 he was ennobled by the Emperor Franz Joseph and from 1912 became known as Philip de László. From an early age he was driven by an unshakable vocation to succeed as an artist. He studied in Budapest, Munich and Paris, soon turning to portraiture as his vocation, and in 1894 received his first important commission from the royal family of Bulgaria, followed in 1899 by the Emperor Franz Joseph and, in 1900, Pope Leo XIII.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Determined to draw -- Art student -- Bolt from the blue -- Waiting game -- Irish wedding -- Vienna -- Conquering England -- America -- London -- At large in Europe -- British subject -- Tiger tactics, troubled times -- Disaster -- Daylight -- Freedom -- Business as usual -- America again -- As fast as Segrave -- Helping Hungary -- Home truths -- Dons and others -- Anny Ahlers -- Dream picture -- The clean-faced girl -- Treated like royalty -- Towards the end -- Postscript.