Mara Hoffmann

Leo Putz: title page youth 25/1912, Mara Hoffmann

Mara Hoffmann (born September 14, 1891 in Graz-Fölling ; † March 15, 1929 in Graz), Countess von Schlik zu Bassano and Weisskirchen since 1914, was a painting student and model of the Munich painter Leo Putz . She became known as a member of the Munich bohemian artist and in 1912 with her portrait on the cover of Jugend magazine .

Life

Maria (Mara) Victoria Eleonora Catharina Hoffmann was the daughter of wealthy Frankfurt privateers Jacob Ludwig Hoffmann and from Vienna v derived Eleonore Johanna Philippine Countess. Breda. Grandparents were the Chamberlain and Senate President of the Vienna Regional Court Ludwig Graf v. Breda (1800–1882) and Marie v. Walter. Mara Hoffmann grew up until 1910 on her father's estate near Salzburg , which had built up an important collection of medieval art. Individual pieces from this collection were auctioned off at Dorotheum Vienna immediately before Jacob Hoffmann's death in May 1910 and are now in the Austrian Belvedere gallery.

After her father's death, Mara Hoffmann moved to Graz with her mother. The landlady at Elisabethstrasse 22 / I there was Franziska Putz, who established a connection with Leo Putz in Munich. A stay of Mara Hoffmann in Munich is documented in 1911/12. She took drawing lessons from Leo Putz, participated in the ball season here, attended carnival festivals and made contact with the Schwabing bohemian artists. The four portraits that Leo Putz made of her (three drawings and one oil painting) all date from 1912. The German-American collector Hugo Reisinger bought the oil portrait “Mara” in 1912 for 1200 marks. Reisinger came from Wiesbaden, was the son-in-law of the brewery king Adolphus Busch ( Anheuser-Busch ), one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum and collector of German Impressionist art . As early as 1914, the portrait was sold in New York from Reisinger's estate to the New York art dealer ML Jellinek. From around 1930 it belonged to the long New York based artist James Sanford Hulme (1900–1974) and, until it was consigned to Sotheby’s London in 2010, his son Bruce H. Hulme. The picture is currently in the Munich art trade.

The important oil painting, which had already left Germany in 1912 in the year it was created and only returned to the European art market in 2010 with the auction at Sotheby's London, was mistakenly identified as a portrait of Leo Putz's maid of honor, Tico Mewes. The mistake in the attribution goes back to an error in the catalog raisonné of Leo Putz: two portraits by Mara Hoffmann (No. 1859 and No. 1860), also created in 1912, were erroneously identified as portraits of Tico Mewes. At the same time, however, the catalog raisonné lists a “Portrait of Mara Hoffmann” as missing - its whereabouts in the USA were unknown at the time, and there was no illustration. One of the listed pastel portraits of Mara Hoffmann (No. 1859) was the cover picture of Jugend (magazine) (1912 issue, No. 25). A third pastel from 1912, not included in the catalog raisonné, is in private hands.

Mara Hoffmann married Franz Graf v. Schlik zu Bassano and Weisskirchen (1882–1963), with whom she settled in Kitzbühel . After the end of the First World War , Count Schlik , who came from Bohemia , proved himself to be a well-known dowry hunter, playboy, car racer and tennis player. Together with Count Max v. Lamberg, he founded the Kitzbühel Sports Club in 1923. The James Bond inventor Ian Fleming met Schlik in the 1920s during his boarding school in Kitzbühel and made him the protagonist of one of his stories. After some turbulent years, the marriage was divorced in 1925: Count Schlik married the sister of his business partner in 1927, Countess Paula von Lamberg (1887–1927) , who was the first female ski jumper .

Mara Countess v. Schlik zu Bassano and Weisskirchen lived in Frankfurt immediately after the divorce and returned to Graz, where she (under this name) died on March 15, 1929 in modest circumstances of pneumonia.

literature

• Helmut Putz: Leo Putz. Comprehensive catalog raisonné in two volumes. Kastner, Wolnzach 1994, ISBN 3-9803-518-1-5 , ISBN 3-9803-518-2-3 .
• Die Scholle: an artist group between the Secession and the Blauer Reiter. P. 184; Exhibition at the Georg Schäfer Museum, Schweinfurt, November 25, 2007 - June 1, 2008.
• The Cicerone. Half-monthly publication for artists and, art lovers and collectors. Volume 8, 1916.
• Dorotheum Wien [Hrsg.]: Catalog of antiques from the estate of Mr. Jakob Ludwig Hoffmann in Salzburg and from other private collections: works of wood sculpture, art furniture, paintings, ceramics, glass, metalwork, stone, mother-of-pearl, wax, miniatures etc. etc .; Auction on May 23, 24, 25, 27, 28 and 30, 1910 (Catalog No. 202), Vienna, 1910.

Web links

• Leo Putz. In: sothebys.com. Retrieved January 5, 2019 . 
• Mara Hoffmann, later Countess Schlik - Leo Putz. In: galerie-schueller.de. Retrieved January 5, 2019 . 

Individual evidence

City Archives Graz: Register of the parish Graz-St.Leonhard; Registration form Graz; Death protocol Graz.