Princess Franziska Lobkowicz 1926

Three-quarter portrait, standing in front of a landscape, background in muted Rembrandt-style brown tones. The sitter, who is looking directly at the viewer, is dressed in a cream-colored silk dress with a V-neck and a brown stole that has fallen back from her shoulders. She is holding a bunch of red flowers in her left arm and a gold ring on her left ring finger. Her hair is cut short and is wavy and her head is slightly tilted.

JQAW# P_1926_020
Oil on canvas 133 x 95 cm
Signed: John Quincy Ɑdams 1926
Private collection, Germany.

Franziska (Fanny) von Lobkovicz, née Princess of Montennuovo. Born 22 August 1893, St. Margarethen am Moos, Austria died 3 November 1972, Wels, Austria.
She was the daughter of Alfred Prince Montenuovo (1854-1927) and Franziska Maria M., née Kinsky von Wchinitz and Tettau (1861-1935). She married Prince Leopold Lobkowicz (1888-1933) on 11 April 1918 in Vienna and they had four children. She had residences in Austria and Checkoslovakia (Dolní Beřkovice Castle) and she spoke four languages (including Czech). Widowed at an early age, she devoted herself to raising her children and participating in social life in Vienna but continued to live in Dolní Beřkovice. Expropriated in 1948, she only managed to emigrate to Austria in 1958; she lived impoverished with relatives at Kremsegg Castle near Kremsmünster where she also died. She is buried in Kirchberg near Kremsmünster.

The portrait of Franziska von Lobkovicz is characteristic of the mature portrait style of Adams after the First World War. Muted colors in shades of brown, which in the present picture effectively enhance the scarlet red of the flowers, give the sitter a distinguished but also aloof appearance and is reminiscent of the equally masterful portrait of Countess Alice Harrach from 1919 or the portrait of Baron Albert Rothschild from 1927. The impressionistically blurred contours of the clothes are also typical of the late Adams’ style (see for comparison the portrait of Mena Fürstenberg 1927). The sitter was a member of the Austrian high aristocracy and was also related to the Emperor’s family (her father Alfred, was a nephew of the second degree and chief steward to Emperor Franz Josef I). Adams also made remarkable portraits of her father Alfred (1917, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and her brother Ferdinand Prince Montenuovo (1888-1951) (1913, lost). In view of the prominence of the portrayed, it is unusual that the painting was not on public display in Vienna during Adams’ lifetime. This was remedied only in 1986.
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Cross-references

Franziska Lobkowicz, Cover Wiener Salonblatt 1.9.1923.

Alfred Prince Montenuovo 1917 (father).

Ferdinand von Montenuovo 1913 (brother).

Portrait Alice Harrach 1919.

Portrait Mena Fürstenberg 1926.

Exhibited

1986 Academy Schillerplatz Vienna, Viennese Society in Portrait, Catalog #54.

Literature

Schaffer/Eisenburger 1986, exhibition catalog #54 (w. color ill.)

APH, catalog raisonné JQA 1995, p. 203, cat.#170, ill.#112.

Provenance

Sitter.
Her family descendants,
private collection, Germany.