Albert „Buster“ Baron Rothschild 1927

Full body portrait, standing, and en face, in front of a landscape background. The 5-year-old Baron Albert in short brown trousers, long stockings, white shirt and blue tie, his right hand in his pocket and holding in his left hand a white toy animal with black ears.

JQAW# P_1927_30
Oil on canvas 128 x 88 cm
Signature: John Quincy Ɑdams 1927
Private collection USA.

Albert Salomon Nimrod "Buster" Rothschild (28.11.1922 Vienna - 28.10.1938 Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland), son of Dr. Alphons and Clarisse (née Sebag-Montefiore) Rothschild.

Only male heir of the 5th generation of the Viennese Rothschild family, still the richest family in Austria despite losses in World War I, hyperinflation (1919-1925), and the Creditanstalt Bank crash in 1931. At the time when the 5-year-old was portrayed by Adams, no one could have foreseen his tragic fate: suffering from throat cancer, Albert died not even 16 years old in the fall of 1938 in Switzerland where he was at boarding school. By this time, the entire Rothschild family was either in exile or in Gestapo custody (Luis Rothschild), their property seized, their art collections confiscated, and their magnificent palaces misused for the Nazi infrastructure of racial persecution, dispossession, and extermination of Vienna's Jews.

Cross-references

Head study for portrait Albert Rothschild 1927

Dr Alphons Baron Rothschild (father) 1915

Exhibited

1927 Künstlerhaus Vienna (EL 78 1927 No. 871).

1986 Academy Schillerplatz Vienna, Viennese Society in Portrait, Catalog No. 56.

Literature

Schaffer/Eisenburger 1986, exhibition catalog #56 (w. color ill.).

APH, catalog raisonné JQA 1995, p. 207, cat.#174, fig.#116.

Roman Sandgruber, Rotschild - Glanz und Untergang des Wiener Welthauses, Molden, Vienna, 2018.

Provenance

Dr. Alphons and Clarisse Rothschild, Austria, USA. Bettina Looram (née Rothschild), Austria.
Her heirs.
Private collection USA.