William Penn Life, 2010 (45. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2010-09-01 / 9. szám

ABOVE: Elena (left) and ßertha de Hellebranth, posing in front of Bertha's 1932 oil painting "View of Budapest." (Photographer unknown)

LEFT: Tempera painting "Folk Madonna" by Elena de Hellebranth, shown at the 1939 World’s Fair. (Photo by Jack Abraham)

OPPOSITE PAGE: "Peasant Mother and Child," sculpture by Bertha de Hellebranth, part of the display in the Hungarian Pavilion of the I 939 New York World’s Fair. (Photo by Jack Abraham)

ily. Their father was a doctor of law and their mother was a piano student of Franz Liszt's last pupil. From about the mid-1930s until World War II, they divided their time between their home in Budapest, which overlooked the Danube and Margaret Island, and a home on the ocean in Ventnor, N.J.

The girls showed early artistic promise, painting from about the age of four or five. The family had both the desire and the means to give them the best artistic training available and later to indulge their wish to come to America to pursue their craft and exhibit their work. They studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Budapest and in Paris at the Academy Julien and Grand Chaumier Academy, finding early acclaim painting portraits of European nobility. Some of their subjects were Admiral Horthy- Regent of Hungary, Princess Baby Galitzine, and Count Julius Andrássy. Growing up in a family of privilege, they seemed to have unusual access to many illustrious people. These portraits are the earliest examples of their work that we have in our museum collection. Several of these same pieces were included in one of their first American exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum in 1929-30. Other noteworthy sitters for portraits were Countess László (Gladys Vanderbilt) Széchényi, Senator William Edgar Borah, conductor Eugene Ormandy, Dr. Jonas Salk and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Later, the two women painted many portraits of clerics and religious subjects. Devout Catholics, both women felt a deep attraction for religious art since their childhoods. One notable piece in the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation collection is a seven-foot-tall,

four-panel screen, depicting the patron saints of Hungary. Executed in gold and silver leaf in a manner that is at the same time Medieval and Modern, it was devised by Elena so that her sister could pray the rosary in solitude. The Foundation's collection also has several of Bertha's religious sculptures, including Saint Francis, Peasant Mother and Child, Madonna-" Our Lady of Gethsemane" and a figure of Christ. Bertha also created designs for stained glass windows depicting religious subjects. Her works are in many Catholic institutions.

Bertha and Elena — personally very close but worlds apart in terms of personality and artistic style — had a unique way of painting. They nearly always painted the same subject simultaneously, producing two individual versions of the same subject and rendering startlingly different results. Individuals sitting for portraits were often surprised by this dual approach. Upon completion of the portraits, the artists allowed the sitter to choose the one that he or she thought best represented them. However, many took home two de Hellebranth works rather than one.

The sisters differed markedly in their style and color preferences. Bertha worked in oils, while Elena preferred casein tempera. Explaining her own subdued color palette, Bertha was often quoted as saying that "Elena is quiet in her life and noisy in her art. I am just the opposite." Elena was strictly a painter, creating landscapes, portraits, religious subjects and, in another vein, folk figures rendered in a flat naif style without any modeling or shading. Several of these folk style panels were part of the display shown in the Hungarian Pavilion of the 1939 New York

William Penn Life 0 September 2010 0 15