Final months and afterlife
Late in 1929 György Rauscher left Berlin for Nice and then Paris; in 1930 he returned to Hungary already ill, painted his last completed portrait, and died of tuberculosis in his parents’ home in Komárom on 3 October 1930, aged twenty-eight. Five years later the Nemzeti Szalon assembled 118 of his works in an estate exhibition that remains the fullest record of his oeuvre. This chapter covers the last months, the death, and the posthumous reception.
Nice and Paris
Late in 1929 Rauscher moved to Nice, where his notes survive on the letterhead of the Hotel Negresco, and then to Paris, taking a studio on the Rue de Vaugirard (/bibliography#szamado-2019, p. 15).
The last portrait
Returning to Hungary in 1930, Rauscher painted his last completed work: a full-length portrait of the wife of Count József Pálffy-Daun, executed at the count’s estate near Bicske. The sitter is Countess Klára Anna (Mária) Fáy de Fáj (1906 to c. 1990), a Hungarian noblewoman, daughter of Baron István Fáy de Fáj and Baroness Hilda Baranyay, who had married Count József Pálffy-Daun in 1927 (/sitters/klara-fay-de-faj; /works/palffy-daun-1930).
Számadó’s monograph describes the sitter as “angol származású” (of English origin); that is an error, and the archive identifies her as Hungarian-born, following the genealogical research set out on her sitter page. Her photograph had appeared in Sport im Bild in December 1928, so the working sequence may have run from a photo-study in Berlin to the live portrait in Hungary (/bibliography#szamado-2019, p. 15).
Illness and death
Rauscher had contracted pulmonary tuberculosis as an eighteen-year-old and had been treated, and supposedly cured, at a sanatorium in the High Tatras (/bibliography#szamado-2019, p. 16). On his return from Bicske in 1930 he complained of a severe chill and, fearing the old infection had returned, went back to the Tátra. When his condition worsened he was moved to Rózsahegy (Ružomberok), where he spent days in an oxygen tent, and was finally brought back by hospital carriage to Komárom, where he died at home on 3 October 1930, aged twenty-eight (/bibliography#szamado-2019, pp. 16-17). He was buried on Sunday 5 October in the Komárom Jewish cemetery, “the whole town accompanying him in sympathy” (/bibliography#magyarorszag-1930-10-07).
Obituaries appeared on 7 October 1930 in Esti Kurir, Pesti Napló, Budapesti Hírlap, Friss Újság, Az Est, and the German-language Pester Lloyd; the Pester Lloyd notice gave his birthplace erroneously as Kaposvár (/bibliography#pester-lloyd-1930-10-07; he was born in Dorog). The touchstone is Lyka Károly’s obituary in Magyar Művészet:
„…képein és rajzain nem annyira a formai megoldást, mint inkább a kifejezést kereste. … lelkiséget, érzelmi elemeket akart azokba bevinni.”
“In his pictures and drawings he sought not so much formal solutions as expression. He wanted to bring into them an inner life, emotional elements.” (
/bibliography#lyka-1930)
The 1935 estate exhibition and after
The studio estate passed to the painter’s parents, and on their deaths at Auschwitz in 1944 to his brother László, who guarded it through the post-war decades. László supplied the works for the 1935 Nemzeti Szalon Hagyatéki kiállítás (estate exhibition), 118 works shown 26 October to 10 November 1935, organised by Hubay Andor; its catalogue is the most complete record of the oeuvre, reproduced and navigable at /exhibitions/1935-nemzeti-szalon-estate. Among its reviewers, the Esti Kurir critic praised the graphic work as “absolute perfection,” and Fóthy János’s “but that hair is never missing” verdict dates from the same season (/bibliography#pesti-hirlap-1935-10-26).
On László’s death in 1997 the remainder of the estate, ten original paintings and thirteen reproductions, reached the Klapka György Múzeum. Rauscher then largely vanished from view until a scholarly recovery began with Gálig Zoltán in the 1990s and culminated in Számadó Emese’s 2019 monograph; works have continued to re-emerge, most strikingly the 2015 Bratislava-cellar finds. That story is told at /rediscoveries.
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