Large Oil Painting by Adolf Pirsch (Krain 1858 - 1929 Graz, Austria)

Por­trait of Anna Maria Elis­a­beth Aloyse as a lit­tle girl, Count­ess Chorin­s­ki, (Brno 1899 – 1988 Vien­na) with her gov­erness; oil on can­vas, in the orig­i­nal gild­ed frame.
Exhib­it­ed at the III. Art Exhi­bi­tion 1902 in Graz, Austria.

Reverse exhi­bi­tion label of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Visu­al Artists Styr­ia, III. Art Exhi­bi­tion 1902, in Graz.

The large full-body por­trait of the young Count­ess Chorin­s­ki with her gov­erness reflects the skill, atten­tion to detail, and radi­ance that make many of Adolf Pirsch’s por­traits so excep­tion­al in a very spe­cial way. The incred­i­ble lumi­nos­i­ty emit­ted by this par­tic­u­lar paint­ing imme­di­ate­ly cap­ti­vates and reflects, in a unique man­ner, the era of the so-called ​‘Belle Époque’ in the Hab­s­burg Empire.

Depict­ed and doc­u­ment­ed in: Rudi Ekkart and Claire van den Donk, ​‘Aanzien­lijke portret­ten; Adolf Pirsch (1858−1929) in Ned­er­land’, W Books, Zwolle, 2022

Prov: Col­lec­tion Hans Miedler Fine Art

Adolf Raimund Julius Pirsch (*July 4, 1858 in Gradac, White Carnio­la, Aus­tri­an Empire; † April 28, 1929 in Graz)
Adolf Pirsch was born in 1858 in Gradac in White Carnio­la, where his father worked in the iron­works of Franz Rit­ter von Friedau. At the age of 16, he moved to Graz and attend­ed the Land­scape Draw­ing Acad­e­my there from 1874 to 1879. His artis­tic path then took him to Vien­na, Venice, Dres­den, Lon­don, Paris, Czech Repub­lic, Bel­gium, and through the Nether­lands short­ly before his death, back to Graz. He spent many years abroad, includ­ing 14 years in Eng­land, and set­tled in Haar­lem for a few years after World War I.

After ini­tial attempts in genre paint­ing, he ded­i­cat­ed him­self entire­ly to por­trai­ture and achieved remark­able qual­i­ty in it. Among oth­ers, he por­trayed Pope Leo XIII, Emper­or Franz Joseph I, and numer­ous oth­er mem­bers of the Euro­pean aris­to­crat­ic soci­ety of the time. From his ear­ly years of cre­ation, we find an altar­piece in the Church of the Broth­ers of Mer­cy from the year 1887.
An impor­tant peri­od for Adolf Pirsch as a por­trait painter was his time in the Nether­lands in the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry. Pre­ced­ing Pirsch in the Nether­lands were two painters also from the Hab­s­burg Empire, Jean Bap­tiste Dis­cart (1855−1940) and Philip de Làs­zlò (1869 ‑1937).
How­ev­er, the for­eign con­tri­bu­tion to Dutch por­trait art was not lim­it­ed to Pirsch, Dis­cart, and De Lás­zló, as oth­er for­eign­ers found their way to the Nether­lands, such as the Hun­gar­i­an Oscar Mend­lik, who worked there from 1900 but would gain pop­u­lar­i­ty some­what lat­er. Also worth men­tion­ing is the Aus­tri­an Armin Horovitz, who worked reg­u­lar­ly for the van Alden­burg Ben­tinek fam­i­ly from 1903 to 1920. It is strik­ing that these artists also orig­i­nat­ed from the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire, which until the end of World War I also includ­ed areas of the Balka­ns and north­ern Italy. Togeth­er with some local painters, these Aus­tri­ans shaped the image of soci­etal por­trait art in the Nether­lands in the first decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Among the Dutch painters who con­tributed to this image were, among oth­ers, Antoon van Welie, Willem Maris Jbzn, and Han van Meegeren.

In 1900, Pirsch, com­mis­sioned by the May­or of Vien­na, cre­at­ed a por­trait of Pope Leo XIII for the Vien­na City Hall, of which at least a sec­ond paint­ing was made for the Pope, and for which Pirsch received the Order of Gre­go­ry from the Pope. In the same year, Pirsch was com­mis­sioned by Count Grun­dack­er von Wurm­brand with a por­trait of Emper­or Franz Joseph, of which there are also sev­er­al ver­sions (lit­er­a­ture ​‘Aanzien­lijke portret­ten; Adolf Pirsch (1858−1929) in Ned­er­land p. 19 fig. 11), see ref­er­ences below. In 1906, Pirsch also cre­at­ed a group por­trait of the chil­dren of Arch­duke Franz Ferdinand.

From 1906, Pirsch worked for the court of the King of Sax­ony, was active in the Eng­lish and Dutch mar­kets from that time, and in 1913, due to a love affair with the Dutch artist Han­na Fieke, from which a daugh­ter emerged, he also worked in Paris.
Adolf Pirsch, 70 years old, returned to his home­town Graz in 1929 where he passed away on April 28. His artis­tic estate went to his unmar­ried sis­ter, who set­tled it ami­ca­bly with Adolf Pirsch’s two daugh­ters, both born out of unmar­ried relationships. 

Sig­nif­i­cant works by Adolf Pirsch can be found, among oth­ers, in the Muse­um Van Loon Ams­ter­dam, Neue Galerie Graz, Roy­al Pic­ture Gallery The Hague, Foun­da­tion Fam­i­ly Kas­teel Rechteren Limpurg, Schloss Ameron­gen, as well as in many pri­vate collections.

Literature/​Reference:
- Rudi Ekkart and Claire van den Donk, ​‘Aanzien­lijke portret­ten; Adolf Pirsch (1858−1929) in Ned­er­land’, W Books, Zwolle, 2022
Exhi­bi­tion ​‘Aanzien­lijke portret­ten – Adolf Pirsch in Ned­er­land’ at the Muse­um Van Loon, Ams­ter­dam, April 8 — June 12, 2022, please see images below *
- Theo P.G. Kralt, The por­trait painters Adolf Pirsch (1858 – 1929), Sir Philip Alex­ius de Lás­zló (1869 – 1937), and Jean Bap­tiste Dis­cart (1855 – 1940) com­pared. Exhi­bi­tion Con­sid­er­able por­traits. Adolf Pirsch (1858 – 1929) in the Nether­lands at Muse­um Van Loon in Ams­ter­dam, Aris­toc­ra­cy in the Nether­lands, April 13, 2022
- Holaus, Bär­bel (ed.)/ Hülm­bauer, Elis­a­beth (ed.)/ Wöhrer, Clau­dia (ed.): Art of the 19^th cen­tu­ry. Inven­to­ry cat­a­log of the Aus­tri­an Gallery of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, Vol. 3: L – R, edit­ed by the Aus­tri­an Gallery Belvedere, Vien­na 1998, p.193