Old-Viennese Bidermeier interior was executed by Austrian portrait, landscape, still life and interior painter Elisabeth Weber-Fülöp ( 1883 Budapest - 1966 in Plymouth, Massachusetts). 

Elisabeth Weber-Fülöp was born in Hungary and grew up in Vienna with adoptive parents. She received her artistic training in Vienna with Ludwig Michalek and later in Paris at the Académie Colarossi and with Jaques-Emile Blanche and Lucian Simon. At the age of 18 she already had her first solo exhibition. In 1920/1921 her studio was in Baden near Vienna, in the house of the widowed Martha Fülöp, aunt of the wife of the Austrian painter Hans Lang. He admired the painter, who was 15 years his senior, and shared a skeptical attitude towards modern art.

She first traveled to America in 1921 to paint the portrait of Austrian Kammersängerin Maria Jeritza, and later moved there entirely with her husband, Austrian architect Emil J. Weber. In 1945 they moved to Duxbury, Massachusetts. There they moved into the King Caesar House, an estate where she maintained a studio and lived with her husband and a lawyer friend until her death in 1966. Her written estate is in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

From 1929 she lived in New York City and became a US citizen. As a portrait painter she created i. a. two life-size portraits of the Austrian Kammersängerin Marie Jeritza and one of the pianist Germaine Schnitzer, which received special mention. The photo archive of the Austrian National Library contains a photograph of Jeritza's portrait, in which the singer and the painter flank it: "Portrait (: whole figure standing, en face) together with the painter Elisabeth Weber-Fülöp in front of a painting of this 'Maria Jeritza as Octavian in 'Rosenkavalier'." In 1930 Elisabeth Weber-Fülöp opened a portrait studio in New York and was described as a portraitist of the New York "plutocracy" (e.g. nine portraits of the family of the millionaire Hatfield).

She also resided in Charleston, South Carolina and in the 1930s in Memphis, Tennessee. In New York City, her portraits were praised for their "speaking resemblance" and the detailed interiors were well received by both clients and critics. Works by her are u. a. at the National Academy of Design and at the Vose Gallery, Boston. In Memphis, she created some portraits of well-known citizens, such as the politically influential Mayor Edward Hull Crump After painting such well-known interiors as Thomas Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park and the Armor Room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Crump not only left his portrait paint of her, but also his living room.

Exhibitions:
1906: 19th Exhibition Hagenbund Vienna
1907: Tavaszi kiállá Budapest
1910: XXXVII. Exhibition of the Association of Austrian Artists Secession Vienna
1911: Spring Exhibition Hagenbund Vienna
1915: Art exhibition forming the trade association. Artists of Austria Vienna
1920: Exhibition of the Kunstverein Baden
1921: Painting exhibition in the Palace of Fine Arts, Vienna

Literature: Prof.H.Fuchs, Lexicon of austrian artists, Vienna, 1975;Hans Vollmer Artist lexicon of 20th century, Leipzig, 1961;  The Painter of New York Society. In: New Free Press. 14 June 1930, accessed 27 November 2020.

Inscription: signed and dated 1923 lower right.

Technique: oil on canvas. Original frame. 

Measurements: unframed  w 35 1/3” x h 28”  (90 x 71 cm), framed w 44 1/4” x h 36 3/4” (112,5 x 93,5 cm)

Condition:in very good condition.