Philip de Laszlo was born on April 30, 1869 in Budapest, Hungary, into the family of Adolf and Johanna Laub, a tailor and seamstress of Jewish origin. De László came from humble origins. He was the eldest son of a family of nine of whom only five children survived. Fülöp and his younger brother Marczi changed their surname to László in 1891.
Philip received little formal education. He was apprenticed at an early age to a photographer while studying art, eventually earning a place at the National Academy of Art, where he studied under Bertalan Székely and Károly Lotz. At fifteen he began studying art at the School of Applied Arts in Budapest. He graduated to the Academy of Fine Arts two years later and in 1889 - 1890 moved to the Academy in Munich. In 1890 - 1891 he spent a year at the Académie Julian in Paris before he returned to Munich for a further two years to complete his studies.
Philip was employed as a set designer, porcelain and maiolica painter and sign writer before being apprenticed in 1884 to the famous portrait photographer Sándor Strelisky. During his formative years de László devoted himself to history and genre painting. His most important works during this period were "Felicián Zách", "L’Incroyable" and above all "Hofbräuhaus." In 1889 he received one of his first portrait commissions from Dr. Pál Galambos (formerly Grünbaum), an influential lawyer from Ó-Becse in rural Hungary. His first royal commission came in 1894 through his friend Alexius de Lippich, the Secretary of the Fine Arts Department in the Hungarian Ministry of Education to paint the Royal Family of Bulgaria. This was followed by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1899 and a commission from Queen Victoria to paint her favourite General Sir George White in 1900.
1900 was a decisive year for de László. He painted members of the German Imperial Family and travelled to Rome in the spring to paint Pope Leo XIII. This picture won him international fame and the Grand Gold Medal at the Paris International Exhibition that year. Philip and his family lived in the studio-house de László had built in Budapest before moving to Vienna in 1903 and then settling in England in 1907.
De László consolidated his reputation world-wide in the first decade of the twentieth century and was proud to be appointed as Member of the Royal Victorian Order by King Edward VII in 1909. As an exponent of the Grand Manner de László’s reputation declined after the Second World War.
During the 1920s and 1930s de László continued to work relentlessly; by his own calculation, he estimated he painted 2,700 portraits over the course of his career. These included members of the majority of royal houses of Europe, European political leaders, British aristocracy and establishment. He was elected president of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1930 and vice-president of the Royal Society of Arts in 1937. He died of a heart attack on 22 November 1937.
Self-Portrait
Princess Beatrice
Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia
Portrait of Vita Sackville-West
Portrait of Lady Rachel Cavendish
John Loader Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby
Edwina Mountbatten, Countess Mountbatten of Burma
Portrait of a Lady
The Son of the Artist
Portrait of Ignaz Wechselmann
Lady Frances Gresley
Princess Louise Mountbatten
Empress Elisabeth of Austria
The Duchess of York
In the brewery in Munich
Queen Marie of Romania
László became interested in Catholicism as a young man, probably through his friendship with the Valentins, an elderly Bavarian couple. He was baptised into the Hungarian Catholic Church in 1894. His faith was especially strengthened by his visit to the Vatican in 1900, where he met and painted the aging Pope Leo XIII. László converted to Anglicanism upon his marriage, and his children were raised as Protestants.
In 1900, Philip married Lucy Guinness of Stillorgan, County Dublin, and became a British subject in 1914. They had five sons, Henry, Stephen, Paul, Patrick and John.
