Glamour money intrigue and scandal defined the life of Hungarian portrait painter Vilma
Parlaghy (1863-1924) who owed her reputation to the rejection of her works by the major Berlin
Art Expositions and to a gold medal she received from Kaiser Wilhelm II. Emperors kings
ministers and industrial magnates posed for her and marriage to a Russian aristocrat earned
her the appellation "Painter Princess". After her divorce she continued her career in America
where she painted portraits of steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie President Theodore Roosevelt and
the ingenious inventor Nikola Tesla. She became a millionaire but lost everything in the end.
She died in New York at the age of 60 and is largely forgotten today - not least because she
took her greatest work of art her own person with her to the grave. Look inside Portraits of
international high society Art and society around 1900
