An emancipated and accomplished woman of the late 19^th century, the German novelist Ossip Schubin (born Aloisia Kirschner, known as Lola) was, in her day, one of the most successful authors of popular literature in Europe. 

Born in Prague in 1854 to a wealthy Jewish family, she was well educated. After her father’s premature death, Ossip Schubin traveled, at an early age, through the European cultural capitals (including Berlin, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Brussels, and St. Petersburg) with her mother and her sister, Marie Kirschner (an artist who became known for her Jugendstil glasswork, of which The Daulton Collection owns a number of fine examples). And in her travels through the intellectual circles of the European salons, Ossip Schubin discovered and developed a personal literary talent, resulting in the prodigious output of more than 40 novels and other books over the course of her life, beginning in 1882 at age 28 with her first novel Ehre [Honor]. She took her nom de plume, Ossip Schubin, from a character in a novel by the Russian author Ivan Turgenev, who she had met in Paris. A keen observer with a gift for striking characterization and sarcastic wit, Schubin was known for her clever description of international fashionable aristocratic society in Europe as well as of artistic bohemianism. Although she was a celebrated author during her lifetime, Ossip Schubin’s popularity declined after the First World War, and her work was quickly forgotten after her death in 1934 at age 79 at Kosatky Castle (Schloss Kosatky) near Prague.

Karl Gussow (1843-1907) was a German painter, who was particularly important for his role as a teacher in a series of academic posts in Weimar, Karlsruhe, Berlin (where he painted this portrait), and, finally, from 1883, Munich; his most famous student was the symbolist artist Max Klinger (who dedicated his print portfolio Dramen to Gussow). In style, Gussow was an exacting realist, known especially for his portraiture, but he transcended the genre and verisimilitude in this penetrating portrait of Ossip Schubin.

Ossip Schubin sat for her portrait at age 33, when her novels, set in the milieu of European high society, were already achieving great success. In Gussow’s portrait, Schubin has an aura about her, a quiet energy. And with her clear, spell-binding gaze, she appears mystical and enigmatic – like an apparition. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the painting was acquired by Elisabeth (Lili) Kolisko (1889-1976) of Vienna, a student and colleague of the esotericist Rudolf Steiner, who was herself an important figure in anthroposophy, the scientific exploration of the spiritual world, and who believed in the transformative power of starlight.

-- Jack Daulton