Lot 28

Max Švabinský (1873 - 1962) SEATED YOUNG WOMAN

Seated Young Woman is unquestionably a sketch for a portrait of Švabinský’s fiancé Ela Vejrychová, as explained in the expert assessment by Prof. PhDr. Petr Wittlich, CSc: “... which can be determined by the typical styling of the young woman’s hair (a straight part?) even though the oval of her face does not feature any drawn details, which is standard for Švabinský’s sketches because he mainly used them to work out the coloring of the painting. Another characteristic feature is the woman’s white clothing  which is connected with the cult of English Pre-Raphaelites, a movement Švabinský embraced at the time. Spots of color indicate flowers enlivening the surface of the painting and indicating the painter’s legendary love of flowers, which later returned as floral patterns covering his models’ clothing or the wallpaper and various textiles in home interiors. This small sketch could be attached to a known series of Švabinský’s portraits of Ela Vejrychová, which are an excellent document of a mentally modern woman at the end of the 19th century. Although a final painting was not made based on [the sketch], its inner rounded format reveals a connection with his famous Round Portrait from 1897 (National Gallery in Prague), which earned Švabinský an Honorable Mention at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris.“