Johann Georg Ziesenis

(Copenhagen 1716–1776 Hannover)
Portrait of Duke Carl II August of Pfalz-Zweibrücken as Hereditary Prince of Bavaria, circa 1757, wearing armour and the sash and star of the order of Saint Hubert,
oil on canvas, 137 x 109 cm, framed

Provenance:
commissioned by the House of Wittelsbach around 1757

We are grateful to Karin Schrader for identifying the artist and sitter of the present painting and for her help in cataloguing the present lot.

This impressive portrait was previously unknown and is unpublished. It is the proud manifestation of dynastic propaganda of the House of Wittelsbach. When it was painted, the young duke was the heir presumptive to the Bavarian throne, and he is depicted in all the splendour of a future Elector. The work is an important addition to Ziesenis’s known oeuvre and will be published in a forthcoming article by Karin Schrader.

Born in Copenhagen in 1716, Johann Georg Ziesenis was a pupil of his father Johann Jürgen Ziesenis. Later, he was appointed court painter in Zweibrücken, then in Mannheim. The present painting dates from his last period at the court of Mannheim (see K. Schrader, The Portrait Painter Johann Georg Ziesenis [1716–1776] – Life and Work with a Critical Oeuvre Catalogue, Münster 1995). In 1760 he entered the service of George II of Hanover and, subsequently, of George III. Ziesenis also worked in Berlin and Brunswick. The British Royal Collection owns a significant amount of Ziesenis’s portraits, mostly from the houses of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

Producing around 260 works in his lifetime, most of which were portraits, Ziesenis is remembered for his intimate portrayals of the European royalty. He began his career working in a traditional Baroque style, but, inspired by Rubens and Van Dyck, effected a transformation in the 1750s, introducing a heightened psychology to his character studies. Ziesenis practiced a new type of enlightened portraiture, the private court portrait. He depicted his subjects at ease in natural surroundings, with an emphasis on education and worldliness rather than on power. In this way Ziesenis’s work ranks alongside the great English portraitists of this period, the Enlightenment. His biographer F. F. Kuntze stated that in invention and execution Ziesenis was the highpoint of eighteenth-century German portraiture.

Prince Carl August inherited the Duchy of Zweibrücken in Southwestern Germany from his paternal uncle, Duke Christian IV, in 1775. He was heir presumptive to his childless cousin Carl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, whom, however, he predeceased. As Karl Theodor had no legitimate children to inherit his combined holdings in Bavaria and the Palatinate, Carl August became the heir to all the territories of the House of Wittelsbach. Karl Theodor preferred the Palatinate and therefore tried to exchange parts of his Bavarian inheritance with Emperor Joseph II, in return for parts of the Austrian Netherlands. Although Karl Theodor would have preferred to exchange the entire complex of Bavaria for the Austrian Netherlands, the imperial court would not countenance an outright exchange, and a final arrangement was never concluded. Carl August, being next in line, objected strenuously. He obtained the active support of Frederick II of Prussia and of Elector Frederick Augustus III of Saxony. The French government, under Foreign Minister Vergennes, passively supported Carl August despite France’s formal alliance with Austria. The War of the Bavarian Succession was resolved without prolonged fighting. Carl Theodor succeeded in all of Bavaria, except the Innviertel, which was assigned to Austria by the Treaty of Teschen (May 1779). A second attempt to make the exchange in 1784 was again opposed by Carl August and failed too. Carl Theodor outlived Carl August, who, dying in 1795 without sons, left his claim to Bavaria to his brother Maximilian Joseph, who would succeed in vastly enlarging the country and becoming its first king in 1806.