Philip Alexius de László

Philip Alexius de László was born in Budapest, then part of Austria-Hungary, in 1869 (most sources give 30 April 1869, though Encyclopaedia Britannica gives 28 April). As a teenager he was apprenticed to the Budapest portrait photographer Sandor Strelisky while beginning formal art study, entering the Budapest School of Applied Arts in 1884 and the Drawing School in 1886, where a state scholarship won him a place at the National Academy of Arts from 1885 to 1889 under Bertalan Szekely and Karoly Lotz. Further state scholarships took him to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Art in Munich, under Sandor von Liezen-Mayer, in two periods (1889 to 1890 and 1891 to 1892), and to the Academie Julian in Paris in 1890 to 1891, where he studied under Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant.

De László's international reputation was established quickly. His 1900 portrait of Pope Leo XIII won the Grand Gold Medal at the Paris International Exhibition, and by the following decade he was painting royal and aristocratic sitters across Europe. He settled in London, where his first major exhibition, at the Fine Art Society in 1907, drew wide attention. In 1909 King Edward VII appointed him a Member of the Royal Victorian Order, and in 1912 Emperor Franz Joseph I elevated him to the Hungarian nobility, according to at least one biographical source. He continued to receive honors through his career; auction catalogues also credit him with the distinction PRBA, for president of the Royal Society of British Artists, though the exact year he held that position is not confirmed here.

De László died on 22 November 1937 at his home in Hampstead, London. His archive and papers were later given to the National Portrait Gallery in London by the de Laszlo Archive Trust, which continues to support scholarship and exhibitions of his work.

De László's 1907 exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London was, by contemporary account, an immediate success that established his London reputation. His obituary in The New York Times (23 November 1937) is reported to have cited a Times of London critic on the technical facility of his later work, alongside concerns that some of his portraits became formulaic under the pressure of high-volume society commissions; the exact wording of that assessment could not be independently confirmed here. That tension, between acknowledged technical skill and concern about the repetitive demands of high-volume society portraiture, runs through the surviving critical record on his later career, even as his early and mid-career royal commissions, including the 1900 portrait of Pope Leo XIII, were honored with major international prizes.

De László's documented auction record is GBP 275,000 (about USD 350,000), paid for the portrait Mrs Adrian van Montagu, nee Anne Mabel Olivia Trouton, at Christie's London in December 2019; the exact day of sale is not confirmed in available sources. The next-highest recorded price is USD 324,500, paid in September 2020 for his portrait of Oonagh Guinness at Ahlers & Ogletree in Atlanta, described in trade press as the second-highest sum ever recorded for the artist at auction. Beyond these results, most of his auction activity sits well below six figures. His output was extremely large, with one museum exhibition text citing more than 4,000 paintings, so supply at auction is abundant relative to demand for his top royal and society sitters, and prices vary widely depending on the sitter, size, and condition of an individual work.

There is no published, bound catalogue raisonne for de László. An online catalogue project maintained with the de Laszlo Archive Trust is compiling his known works, but it should be understood as an ongoing research resource rather than a finished, definitive catalogue. Given the size of his output, provenance and correct sitter identification matter more than usual when evaluating an individual work. His archive and correspondence are held at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and Richard Green in London is the gallery most consistently active in presenting his work to the market today.