Marie-Louise Von Motesiczky: Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings

34
Still-life with Photo
Stilleben mit Photographie
1930
Oil on canvas, 817 × 490 mm
Signed (bottom right): 1930 Motesiczky
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust, London
This still-life of seemingly haphazardly gathered
and wittily arranged personal objects in precarious
balance combines memories of carefree
summers in the country and a certain nostalgia
for a lost way of life. Working in the garden of
the family’s estate in Hinterbrühl, Motesiczky
gathered objects from inside the Villa Todesco,
by now closed up, which were suitable for
being painted in bright sunshine. From the
‘English corner’ of the drawing room she
selected a stool with a floral chintz cover (as
real flowers would have wilted in the sun).
Propped against the wall on the brightly
coloured cushion is a sepia photograph in a
golden frame, crowning the arrangement. A
graceful little wickerwork footrest sits underneath
the stool, a tennis ball balanced on top
of it. Distinct, dark shadows give shape and
solidity to the fragile equilibrium of the objects.
In the world economic crisis of the late
1920s the members of the Motesiczky family
lost substantial parts of their immense fortune.
They subsequently had to cut back dramatically
and went to live in the smaller Swiss chalet
on the estate. The villa, with its notoriously
uneven floors caused by the underground
stream on which it was built, had to be pulled
down in the 1930s. The family’s apparent security
was finally crushed in 1938 when the artist
and her mother were forced to flee the country.
The photograph is based loosely on a family
photograph from the 1860s, showing relatives
on her mother’s side who, sadly, cannot be
identified from the photograph. Alongside two
round vignettes of individual family members
this group photograph was proudly displayed
in the salon of the Villa Todesco, installed on
an elaborate wooden panel (fig. 55). Motesiczky
simplified the photograph by leaving out
several ancestors in the painted version.
Still-life with Photo had a special meaning
for the artist’s mother Henriette von Motesiczky,
who bought it from the exhibition at the Beaux
Arts Gallery in January 1960 for £ 94.10.0. In
an undated (and probably much later) poem
about the painting – included in the book of
Henriette von Motesiczky’s poems and
drawings that the artist created in memory
of her mother for friends and relatives in the
early 1980s – she had expressed her admiration
for the painting and nostalgia for the lost
world and the deception it held, captured by
the image:
Family Portrait
The hot bright rays of sun
The deep shadows of that time,
You could paint them in a picture
Now captured for eternity.
And you have forgotten nothing in it,
The picture of the people on the wall
How they all sat there like that,
Maybe that no one felt anything.
The old thick garden stool
Where tired feet used to rest,
What the picture means to me, only you
can judge
It captures the high spirits of youth.
Carefree living, laughter and some tears
When the tennis ball flew past
A scrap of colourful chintz could draw
it together
Into a world that perhaps betrayed us 1
Motesiczky was pleased with this painting and,
rather uncharacteristically, praised it: ‘every
inch of canvas has the right amount of colour,
thickness, transparency. There’s a great certainty.
That little stool has something terribly delicate
about it, and the shadows are very assured.’ 2
sources from the archive of
the marie-louise von motesiczky
charitable trust
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, undated manuscript: ‘In
“Still Life with Photo” (1930), every inch of canvas has
the right amount of colour, thickness, transparency.
There’s a great certainty. That little stool has something
terribly delicate about it, and the shadows are
very assured. This was in the family summer house,
Villa Todesco, south of Vienna. In the 1860s, there was
an Englishwoman and her great love, my great-greatuncle.
There was a hunting accident and the Prince
Fig. 55 Interior view of the salon at the Villa Todesco,
Hinterbrühl, with a display of family photographs,
photograph, undated (Motesiczky archive)
Lichtenstein was wounded. In the house the woman
went off with him and my great-great-uncle said goodbye
to the house with its big drawing room with its
English chintz, and my great-great-grandfather got it.
Around the time the picture was painted, there came
a tremendous fashion in Austria for things Victorian.
The seeds were already there in me. The Villa’s walls
were covered in real green chintz. I loved all these
things. The photograph is of my relations of the
1860s. Much later, my mother wrote a poem about
the painting, with a line, “When that little tennis ball
and a little bit of chintz could still reassemble a world
which perhaps betrayed us.”’
notes
1 Familienbild
Die heissen lichten Sonnenstrahlen
Die tiefen Schatten jener Zeit,
Du könntest auf ein Bild sie mahlen
Nun eingefangen für die Ewigkeit.
Und nichts hast Du darauf vergessen,
Das Bild der Menschen an der Wand
Wie sie so alle dort gesessen,
Vielleicht das keiner was empfand.
Den alten dicken Gartenschemel
Wo müde Fusse einst geruht,
Was mir das Bild ist, kannst nur Du ermessen
Es liegt darin der Jugend Übermuth.
Sorgloses Leben, Lachen und ein Weinen
Wenn jener Tennisball vorüber flog
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