2025 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 129129 / 354 • View Catalog •
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VERSO
Label, Christie’s, Los Angeles, California
Born in Hungary, Joseph Kleitsch realized a relatively short but distinguished career. Training and studying at schools in Budapest, Munich and Paris, by the age of 17 he was regarded as an accomplished portraitist with such clients as Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.
Kleitsch would move to the United States in 1902, and first visited and painted in Mexico City from 1907-09. Returning in 1911, he was honored the following year by Mexican President Francisco Madero and his wife for his commissioned portraits of the royal family.
Known for his impressionistic landscapes of Southern California, Kleitsch also painted many masterful still lifes during his career, including The Interrupted Hand. Arthur Millier, art critic for the Los Angeles Times, said of Kleitsch that he was “a born colorist; he seemed to play on canvas with the abandon of a gypsy violinist.”
PROVENANCE
Christie’s, Los Angeles, California, 2003
Private collection, Wyoming
LITERATURE
Patricia Trenton, Joseph Kleitsch: A Kaleidoscope of Color, The Irvine Museum, 2007, p. 66, illustrated
