FREDERICK WILLIAM BILLING (German/American, 1835-1914) after Julius Friedrich Antonio Schrader...

FREDERICK WILLIAM BILLING (German/American, 1835-1914), after Julius Friedrich Antonio Schrader (German, 1815-1900)
Portrait of Feldmarschall Helmuth Graf von Moltke
signed and dated 'F.H. Billings '74 / nach / Julius Schrader 1872' (lower right); identified on a presentation plaque
oil on canvas
61.0 x 45.5 cm (24 x 17 15/16 in).
framed 85.5 x 70.5 x 11.0 cm (33 11/16 x 27 3/4 x 4 5/16 in).
Provenance
Private New York collection.
Sale, Rago Auction, New Jersey, April 20, 2013, lot 166.
The collection of Eric van Rooy (acquired from the previous).

N.B.
Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (Parchim 1800 - Berlin 1891) was a German general and Chief of the Great German General Staff. From 1835-1837 he traveled throughout the Ottoman Empire advising the Sultan Mahmud II on the modernization of the Ottoman army. Moltke was also one of the first directors of the Hamburg-Berlin railway and was greatly interested in the implications of rail travel for military strategy. Moltke was an extremely well-respected and well-known military leader, theorist, and strategist; he served as personal adjutant to Prince Henry of Prussia, served as personal aide and mentor to Prince Frederick William (Emperor Frederick III), and attended the 1855 coronation of Alexander III of Russia. In 1866 Moltke was charged with planning and leading the military strategy of the Austro-Prussian War. He was made a count (Graf) in 1870 and promoted to field marshal in 1871. On October 26 1890 he turned 90, and on this occasion a national holiday was declared.

Moltke's military theory remains immensely influential in military strategic history. He was influenced by Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who highlighted the moral implications of warfare, and by Napoleon's use of modern weaponry and of enveloping, rather than front-heavy, attack. Moltke's broad military thesis was that strategy should be a system of options rather than a stringent order of operations, which would allow for flexibility throughout the battle as circumstances developed and unfolded often unpredictably. This is summarized in his statement that "No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength" (Moltke, Helmuth, Graf von, Militarische Werke. vol. 2, part 2, pp. 33–40).

Moltke was also a published author. His works include a romance titled The Two Friends (1827), two essays titled Holland and Belgium in their Mutual Relations, from their Separation under Philip II to their Reunion under William I (1831) and An Account of the Internal Circumstances and Social Conditions of Poland (1832), a collection of personal letters titled Letters on Conditions and Events in Turkey in the Years 1835 to 1839 (1839), an article titled What Considerations should determine the Choice of the Course of Railways? (1843), and The Russo-Turkish Campaign in Europe, 1828-1829 (1845).

In 1889 Moltke used Thomas Edison's recently invented cylinder phonograph - brought to Germany by Edison's colleague Adelbert Theodor Wangemann - to make two voice recordings of a passage from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3) and a passage from Goethe's Faust. Both recordings were lost until 1957 and remained unidentified until 2012. These recordings are the only known existing recordings of a person born in the 18th century.