Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1913 — WOES OF AN ARCHDUCHESS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WOES OF AN ARCHDUCHESS

Kaiser Francis Joseph is cross he ■V / sends for Archduchess ■■/ Maria Jose fa, and Wrmf asks to be soothed. J y Archduchess Marla Befa ls a Saxon prlncess, sister of rigid M/LMmSS King Friedrich August ■fliLp||g§B of Saxony, and widow mmm ot l lv ®ly Archduke Othon. She is the ambitions mother of young Karl Frans Joseph, second heir to the throne. 80 she is a very important person; and she is uncommonly successful at aoothing Kaiser Francis Joseph. But the tale is that when Archduchess Maria Josefa last was summoned to Schoenbrunn to soothe Francis Joseph she needed soothing herself. Francis Joseph was in a terrible rage because the Turks were beaten, and that meant complications, and Maria Josefa was in a terrible rage because of troubles with her pictures. And neither soothed the other. Archduchess Maria Josefa, relatively late in life, aspired to be a great painter. Had she begun sooner she might have succeeded. Painting talent runs in the house of Wettln. Her sister, Princes Mathilde, paints picture posters for charitable. societies, and her brother, the Reverend Prince Max, sketches the Swiss hills So Archduchess Marla Josefa doesn’t see why she shouldn’t develop into a Rosa Bonheur. 0 She began by patronizing other artists and other arts. She ran the Vienna Photographic clulj and the Vienna Oil Color society, and she made modest sketches and studies lr her notebook. The palace of Miramar first Inspired, her to paint on a big scale. Mlrarar is the magic palace built by Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, near Trieste, and it now belongs to Archduchess Maria Josefa who stays, there every summer. Mid-dle-aged as she is, by the way, she can swim three miles straight out to cea. In 1909. Archduchess Maria Josefa exhibited a watlr-color drawing of Miramar with its background of cypresses, and this was so well received that she went in for painting wholesale. '-She traveled about, and started a series of pictures of Dalma tia, Istria. the Herzegovina, the Quarnero and the emerald island of Brionl All were painted in light, aerial col ors. She ended up with an enormous picture of Miramar castle with a white yacht beating down to the little harbor at the rear. Unluckily, this picture of Miramar made universal trouble. The archduchess took her picture very seriously, and resolved that it should be exhibited only in the best artistic society. And here someone swindled her. She sent the picture to an exhibition of a so-called Eclectic Art club, which professed to show only the best modern pictures from all countries. The Eclectic Art club was founded by a

decadent painter named Alphonse Dueppeln and it was the latest htlng in the outre and esoteric. But a day after the archduchess seniT her picture there _ she saw all Vienna placarded with puffs of the Eclectic club "which has been honored by Archduchess Maria Josefa.” That annoyed the archduchess. What "arfnoyed her more was a little paragraph that appeared In the Neues Wiener Tageblatt The paragraph boldly declared that Herr Dueppeln and his Electlc club were frauds and that many obscure and foolish artists had paid large sums for the useless honor of having their daubs hung in the club. To prove this the Tageblatt. sent a particularly bad daub, done by its office boy, and S2OO to the club, and it had the joy of seeing the S2OO taken and the daub hung ndt three yards away from the archducal Palace of Miramar. This was bad, but things were made worse by the malice of the archducal clique which is opposed Ao Archduchses Maria Josefa land to her son, Karl Franz Joseph. At the head of this clique is supposed to be Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who is a real judge of pictures, though he has never painted anything himself. The rival clique started the wild legfend that the archduchess had herself paid money to have her picture hung, as the regular Vienna exhibition committee had refused to hang it. This was untrue. To prove its untruth Archduchess Maria Josefa organized a large private exhibition of her own pictures. There were views of the bay of Trieste, with wonderful pictures of Orado, Dulno, Sistlano, Grignano, and other beauty spots of the

miraculous North Adriatic. The archduchess showed everyone that she has a real, if limited, talent as an artist, and that she could afford to laugh at her malicious enemieß, the other archduchesses who—she is reported to have said—"have never painted anything except their own unbeautiful faces.” ■ Unfortunately, ypu cannpt woo art in a half-hearted way and only a genius can be a great artist and a great political archduchess at the same time. Archduchess Maria Josefa tried this and failed dismally. She designed an ambitious picture . entitled Floreat Austria, which was to contain figures of many distinguished historical Hapsburgs. This she proposed to present to Kaiser Francis Joseph on his next birthday. Her aim was twofold; she would outrival Hans Makart in the giant group line and she would please the old kaiser, from whose will in the end depends the set* tlement of the feud as to the succession. The picture would have undoubtedly pleased Francis Joseph, who has a big share of dynastic pride and quite pardonably holds that the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine is the most illustrious on earth. But with this half-artistic, half-political enterprise Archduches Maria Josefa had no luck. She had got only half way through her picture and was Industriously coloring the imposing profile of Empress Maria Theresa when the blow fell. The morning papers announced that: “His majesty has been pleased to accept from the heir presumptive, his Imperial and royal highness, Archduke Frank Ferdinand of AnstriaEste, a symbolic picture, The FlourIshing of Austria.”