19th, 20th & 21st Century Fine Prints
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Mrs. Adelberg and Daughter (Helene & Liesl) by Max Pollak
Mrs. Adelberg and Daughter (Helene & Liesl)
Max Pollak
Mrs. Adelberg and Daughter (Helene & Liesl)
Max Pollak
1886 - 1970 (biography)Max Pollak created this portrait in 1909 when he was a student at the Vienna Academy of Art, learning the traditional drypoint techniques of the late 19th century from his instructors William Unger and Ferdinand Schmutzer. He added subtle coloring using both aquatint - printed a la poupeé - and hand applied color. This is a printer's proof and it does not appear that the portrait was ever editioned.
The subjects of this portrait are Mrs. Helene Adelberg and her daughter Liesl (Alice). It may have been commissioned by the Adelberg family and is one of the earliest examples of the many portraits he did throughout the decades, which helped him to financially afford to do his other, more experimental printmaking.
Helene Adelberg (nee Gewitsch) was born in Vienna in 1881 to Herman and Friederike (Franzi) Gewitsch, the first of four siblings. The family was musically gifted and Helene, Paula, Carl, and Leo were known for their skills as pianists and violinists. Helene married Alfred Adelberg in 1902 and they had five children: Alice (who went as Liesl), Georg, Franz, Fritz, and Eva.
Tragically, with the rise of Nazi Germany, Helene, her sister, and her youngest child Eva were deported to the Sobibor concentration camp in Lublin in June of 1942. They did not survive.
Liesl, pictured here with a slight smile and her hand on her mother's knee, was born in Vienna in 1903. She married Robert Landis in 1927 and the two lived briefly in London before emigrating to the U.S. via Liverpool in 1943 (her name appears on the ship's manifest of the SS Esperance Bay, April 1943). Her brothers also survived the war and emigrated to the U.S. Liesl, by then known as Alice, died in New York, NY at age 83.