Anton Graff 1736 Wintherthur – Dresden 1813 Self-portrait at the easel
Oil on canvas, relined. (c. 1803). 66.7 x 48.3 cm. In an original rococo frame.
Period
15th-18th Century
Technique
Oil
Details
Literatur:
Die Kunst für Alle, XXXIX. Jg., München 1923-24, S. 345 (ohne Abb.);
Eberhard Lutze, in: Fränkischer Kurier (Nürnberg), Nr. 336 v. 3.12.1936, mit Abb.;
Ekhart Berckenhagen, Anton Graff. Leben und Werk, Berlin 1967, S. 158, Kat.-Nr. 512.
Ausstellung:
Dresdner Malerei 1750-1850, Galerie Paul Rusch, Dresden 1924.
Provenienz:
Galerie Paul Rusch, Dresden, 1924;
Privatbesitz, Franken (1936);
Privatbesitz, Süddeutschland.
Description
There is hardly another artist of the 18th century who observed himself in self-portraits as often as Anton Graff, who worked in Dresden as a Saxon court painter and came from Switzerland. Ekhart Berckenhagen, the author of Graff’s catalogue raisonné, lists no fewer than 80 self-portraits, including the famous portrait in Leipzig, which shows the painter in a casual pose working at the easel, and the no less famous portrait in Dresden at the age of 58, in which Graff is sitting on a chair, brush and palette in his left hand, turning away from the canvas and towards the viewer. Graff often repeated the latter, above all as a hip portrait, and it was also popularised in 1797 in an engraving by the Stuttgart engraver Johann Gotthard Müller.
Our painting is also based on the self-portrait painted in Dresden in 1794/95, in which the painter shows himself in full figure. Here, too, the painter has turned away from the canvas and towards the viewer, his right arm casually draped over the back of the chair, his alert gaze creating an immediate relationship between the sitter and the viewer. Graff was praised by his contemporaries for this immediacy of the encounter. They recognised the greatness of his portraiture in the fact that Graff painted the whole person – not just their physical appearance, but also their soul. Graff’s gaze penetrated “right to the centre of the soul”, as the art theorist and friend of Graff, Johann Georg Sulzer, aptly put it. It is the subtle psychologisation that also speaks from the artist’s face, between stately representation and thoughtfulness: Graff’s brightly lit face reveals his countenance, which signals alertness and tension in the tightly compressed lips and eyebrows. This contrasts with his casual pose, which, as is often the case with Graff, includes the “eloquent” hands that are “active” in the picture: The arm draped over the back of the chair is closest to the viewer, almost tangible.
In contrast to the Dresden self-portrait, Graff has expanded the arrangement of his portrait here – while in Dresden he is sitting in front of an empty canvas, here he is working on an oval portrait of a lady who was well known to his contemporaries at the time: it is a portrait of Elisa von der Recke (1754-1833), a salon lady and occasional poet who achieved fame in 1787 when she exposed the charlatanry of Alessandro Cagliostro, who had swindled half of Europe. She had herself painted by Graff for the first time in 1795, and her portrait in our painting goes back to a drawing that Graff probably made in 1798 on the occasion of a visit to the Recke in Dresden (today Düsseldorf, Goethe Museum, Kippenberg Foundation, cf. Berckenhagen 1132). Behind her portrait, leaning against a chest of drawers and reading a book, is a middle-aged man – it is the poet Christoph August Tiedge (1752-1841), a companion of her soul and known for the settings of some of his poems by Ludwig van Beethoven. Von der Recke lived with Tiedge, who had also accompanied her on her trip to Italy from 1804 to 1806, “in constant companionship with the poet” (Berckenhagen) from 1803.
Graff had already painted and drawn both of them before 1800, but not together. Graff probably painted the painting for one of the two, but it also seems possible that it was created before the two left for Italy as a romantic friendship painting, which the painter would then have dedicated to the two travellers.
Dr Peter Prange
With a written certificate by Prof Dr Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, dated 13.9.2023.
Bid on this lot
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Time, Location
Auction House
Oil on canvas, relined. (c. 1803). 66.7 x 48.3 cm. In an original rococo frame.
Period
15th-18th Century
Technique
Oil
Details
Literatur:
Die Kunst für Alle, XXXIX. Jg., München 1923-24, S. 345 (ohne Abb.);
Eberhard Lutze, in: Fränkischer Kurier (Nürnberg), Nr. 336 v. 3.12.1936, mit Abb.;
Ekhart Berckenhagen, Anton Graff. Leben und Werk, Berlin 1967, S. 158, Kat.-Nr. 512.
Ausstellung:
Dresdner Malerei 1750-1850, Galerie Paul Rusch, Dresden 1924.
Provenienz:
Galerie Paul Rusch, Dresden, 1924;
Privatbesitz, Franken (1936);
Privatbesitz, Süddeutschland.
Description
There is hardly another artist of the 18th century who observed himself in self-portraits as often as Anton Graff, who worked in Dresden as a Saxon court painter and came from Switzerland. Ekhart Berckenhagen, the author of Graff’s catalogue raisonné, lists no fewer than 80 self-portraits, including the famous portrait in Leipzig, which shows the painter in a casual pose working at the easel, and the no less famous portrait in Dresden at the age of 58, in which Graff is sitting on a chair, brush and palette in his left hand, turning away from the canvas and towards the viewer. Graff often repeated the latter, above all as a hip portrait, and it was also popularised in 1797 in an engraving by the Stuttgart engraver Johann Gotthard Müller.
Our painting is also based on the self-portrait painted in Dresden in 1794/95, in which the painter shows himself in full figure. Here, too, the painter has turned away from the canvas and towards the viewer, his right arm casually draped over the back of the chair, his alert gaze creating an immediate relationship between the sitter and the viewer. Graff was praised by his contemporaries for this immediacy of the encounter. They recognised the greatness of his portraiture in the fact that Graff painted the whole person – not just their physical appearance, but also their soul. Graff’s gaze penetrated “right to the centre of the soul”, as the art theorist and friend of Graff, Johann Georg Sulzer, aptly put it. It is the subtle psychologisation that also speaks from the artist’s face, between stately representation and thoughtfulness: Graff’s brightly lit face reveals his countenance, which signals alertness and tension in the tightly compressed lips and eyebrows. This contrasts with his casual pose, which, as is often the case with Graff, includes the “eloquent” hands that are “active” in the picture: The arm draped over the back of the chair is closest to the viewer, almost tangible.
In contrast to the Dresden self-portrait, Graff has expanded the arrangement of his portrait here – while in Dresden he is sitting in front of an empty canvas, here he is working on an oval portrait of a lady who was well known to his contemporaries at the time: it is a portrait of Elisa von der Recke (1754-1833), a salon lady and occasional poet who achieved fame in 1787 when she exposed the charlatanry of Alessandro Cagliostro, who had swindled half of Europe. She had herself painted by Graff for the first time in 1795, and her portrait in our painting goes back to a drawing that Graff probably made in 1798 on the occasion of a visit to the Recke in Dresden (today Düsseldorf, Goethe Museum, Kippenberg Foundation, cf. Berckenhagen 1132). Behind her portrait, leaning against a chest of drawers and reading a book, is a middle-aged man – it is the poet Christoph August Tiedge (1752-1841), a companion of her soul and known for the settings of some of his poems by Ludwig van Beethoven. Von der Recke lived with Tiedge, who had also accompanied her on her trip to Italy from 1804 to 1806, “in constant companionship with the poet” (Berckenhagen) from 1803.
Graff had already painted and drawn both of them before 1800, but not together. Graff probably painted the painting for one of the two, but it also seems possible that it was created before the two left for Italy as a romantic friendship painting, which the painter would then have dedicated to the two travellers.
Dr Peter Prange
With a written certificate by Prof Dr Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, dated 13.9.2023.
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
