Marie von Striberski 1924
Three-quarter portrait in sitting position in profile view. The portrayed, with her black hair pinned up, her hands crossed on her knees, looking into the distance. She wears a black dress with a gold-colored cape as a top, which leaves her shoulders free. Background only hinted at as an abstract landscape. The predominant color tone is black and gray, only the skin of the portrayed and the gold-colored top set a muted color accent.
JQAW# P_1924_050
Oil on canvas, 125 x 90 cm.
Signature: John Quincy Ɑdams
Museum der Moderne Salzburg BS 7658
Photo: Hubert Auer.
Marie von Striberski (25.9. 1890 Vienna - 9.2. 1979 Salzburg), married to Otto von Striberski, partner of the construction company Ed. Ast (see Villa Ast by Joseph Hoffmann), living in Vienna (Rathausstr. 9). In 1935 the couple moved to Salzburg and purchased the Marien-Theresien Schlössl in Salzburg Morzg. After its rennovation and modification (by the Viennese Art Nouveau architects Keller and Knoll), they opened a diet pension. 1954 sale of the property. (It was last owned by the Red Bull industrialist Dietrich Mateschitz (1944-2022).) Marie von Striberski donated her Adams portrait to the Residenzgalerie Salzburg, now the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, already during her lifetime (1977). Burial place at Morzg Cemetery, Salzburg.
According to family tradition, the purchase of the Schössl was made possible by the fact that the couple was able to preserve their fortune unharmed through the period 1918/19 and the following hyperinflationary period by purchasing extensive jewelry from Katharina Schratt (which she had received as a gift from Emperor Franz Josef I), who was probably in financial straits again due to her passion for gambling). The exquiste furnishings of the Marien-Theresien Schlössl, including the Adams portrait, were moved from the couple's Vienna apartment to Salzburg and used to furnish the boarding house. In her personal memoirs on the occasion of the donation in 1977, Marie von Striberski recalls that her family was well acquainted with Adams and that the artist was often a guest in her apartment in Rathausstraße. Her portrait was painted in Adams' studio in Theresianumgasse and required 15 sittings, during which Adams chose her clothes and later also the frame of the painting. The fee demanded was an impressive 8,000 Austrian Schilling, which Otto von Striberski rounded up to 10,000 Schilling, equivalent to around 500,000 euros in today's money.
The portrait of Marie von Striberski is one of the most effective portraits from Adams late period. The classical profile view and the graduated black and gray ground tones, which are unique among Adam's works (who otherwise preferred Rembrandesque brown tones), give the portrayed a particularly distinguished, if somewhat distant, character. The portrait is more than a match for Adam's most outstanding paintings from this period.
Cross-references
Exhibited
1986: Academy Schillerplatz Vienna, Viennese Society in Portrait, Catalog No. 49
Literature
Schaffer/Eisenburger 1986, exhibition catalog #49 (w. B/W ill.)
APH, catalog raisonné JQA 1995, p. 187, cat.#154, ill.#103.
Provenance
Sitter.
1977 donated by her to the Residenzglerie Salzburg, later renamed Museum der Moderne Salzburg #BS 7658.