Portrait of Mrs Imre Szentgyörgyi Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

The portraits of Imre Szentgyörgyi and his wife, Borbála Kirchlechner, were painted by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, one of the most popular portraitists in Vienna in the Biedermeier period. The couple were married in 1825. Szentgyörgyi, who was born into a Transylvanian gentry family, was a qualified lawyer and a councillor in the Court Chancellery in Vienna. He was tried for his role in the events of the 1848–49 War of Independence and subsequently discharged from his post.
In contrast to the academic approach, which relied on the copying of old works of art, Waldmüller favoured the direct observation of nature; he recalled how he came to this realisation precisely in the context of a commission for a portrait. At the same time, the kind of idealisation typical of Biedermeier portraiture remains perceptible in his work: in the case of the Szentgyörgyi portraits, it is apparent in the thin layering of the paint, the handling of light, and the subtle facial expressions that alleviate the formality of the paintings.
The museum purchased the portraits from the couple’s son, Albert Szentgyörgyi, grandfather of the Nobel Prize–winning scientist, in 1917.

Dominika Sodics