Did the great-grandson of US president John Quincy Adams paint the gorgeous portrait of Katinka Károlyi? Well, it is surprising and it is true.
A hundred years ago Countess Katinka (Catherine) Andrássy, the Red Countess, was a celebrated beauty in Hungary. She was born in 1892 into a powerful noble family and after a privileged upbringing she married the super-rich Count Mihály Károlyi who served as Prime Minister, then President of the First Hungarian Republic.
They were the ultimate power-couple. She passionately loved her husband who was 17 years of her senior and followed him into exile. Both were well-educated, intelligent and fought for progress. Katinka was a fiery political lobbyist who wrote articles and gave speeches.
The stylish Károlyi couple leaving the Hungarian Parliament building in 1918.
In 1924, Red Catherine, as the Americans called her, arrived to the US. The Countess was a staunch ally of the progressive Hungarian-Americans diaspora and newspapers wrote that “her charming personality, her beauty and her ability as an actress to present in varying tones her cause and to make appeal to fashionable audiences.” To the charge that she was a Bolshevik, the Countess retorted: “This is quite ridiculous. My husband and I are Socialists, but that does not mean that we are Communists.”
Katinka also loved fashion and art. In 1918 she ordered a portrait from an Austrian painter who happened to be the great-grandson of the sixth president of the United States – John Quincy Adams. How did the US President’s great-grandson end up in Austria?
Photo: Portrait of Katinka Károlyi by Austrian painter John Quincy Adams.
Boston born Charles Adams, the grandson of US President Adams, was an opera singer, famous for his interpretations of Wagner operas. He was the member of the Vienna Court Opera and he married a Hungarian woman, Nina Bleyer. They named their son, John Quincy Adams. Although he was raised in the US, he later returned to Vienna to study at the Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited at Künstlerhaus winning several medals.
Adams died as a celebrated portrait painter in 1933; he is buried in Vienna. Today he is considered an Austrian, few mention his American and Hungarian roots. The huge portrait of Countess Katinka Károlyi is one of his best. It is frequently featured in art books as a fine example of Austrian portrait painting.
György Lázár
