Joseph Stieler - Portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling
Joseph Stieler
Portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling
Oil on canvas. 72 x 58.5 cm.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling (1775-1854) was one of the most important and influential philosophers of the first half of the 19th century. Alongside Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schlegel, it was above all Schelling who laid the foundations of early German Romanticism. At the age of 15, he studied together with Hegel and Hölderlin in Tübingen and wrote his ground-breaking "Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature" in 1797. Goethe became aware of the young philosopher early on and offered him a teaching position at the University of Jena in 1798. In 1827, he was called to Munich and in 1842, after Hegel's death, Schelling took up a teaching position in Berlin for four years. Schelling is regarded as the main founder of speculative natural philosophy, in which he analyses the relationship between nature and spirit and develops the idea of an organic connection between them.
Joseph Stieler presents the outstanding philosopher in a three-quarter view, with the head depicted almost frontally. The viewer is immediately captivated by the sitter's eyes, which fixate him attentively and almost penetrate him. In her catalogue raisonné of Stieler's work, Ulrike von Hase even describes them as "the most expressive eyes in an early 19th century portrait" (op. cit., p. 74). As Ulrike von Hase writes, Stieler proved to be a specialist in capturing the focus and action of the gaze. In addition to the philosopher's penetrating eyes, the painting's impression is determined above all by the contrast between the red cloak, reminiscent of a toga, and the black of the other clothing and the deliberately indeterminate dark background. Further accents are set by the bright white collar and the precisely drawn curly hair. The portrait of Schelling, which is still in the possession of his descendants and of which a further version is kept in the Bavarian State Painting Collection, stands at the transition from Stieler's mature phase to his late period and in this respect also occupies a special position in the artist's oeuvre.
Provenance
Passed down by descent in the family of the sitter to the present day.
Literature
Ulrike von Hase: Joseph Stieler 1781-1858. Sein Leben und sein Werk. Kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke (=Materialien zur Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts 4), Munich 1971, p. 137, no. 168
Bid on this lot
Joseph Stieler
Portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling
Oil on canvas. 72 x 58.5 cm.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling (1775-1854) was one of the most important and influential philosophers of the first half of the 19th century. Alongside Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schlegel, it was above all Schelling who laid the foundations of early German Romanticism. At the age of 15, he studied together with Hegel and Hölderlin in Tübingen and wrote his ground-breaking "Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature" in 1797. Goethe became aware of the young philosopher early on and offered him a teaching position at the University of Jena in 1798. In 1827, he was called to Munich and in 1842, after Hegel's death, Schelling took up a teaching position in Berlin for four years. Schelling is regarded as the main founder of speculative natural philosophy, in which he analyses the relationship between nature and spirit and develops the idea of an organic connection between them.
Joseph Stieler presents the outstanding philosopher in a three-quarter view, with the head depicted almost frontally. The viewer is immediately captivated by the sitter's eyes, which fixate him attentively and almost penetrate him. In her catalogue raisonné of Stieler's work, Ulrike von Hase even describes them as "the most expressive eyes in an early 19th century portrait" (op. cit., p. 74). As Ulrike von Hase writes, Stieler proved to be a specialist in capturing the focus and action of the gaze. In addition to the philosopher's penetrating eyes, the painting's impression is determined above all by the contrast between the red cloak, reminiscent of a toga, and the black of the other clothing and the deliberately indeterminate dark background. Further accents are set by the bright white collar and the precisely drawn curly hair. The portrait of Schelling, which is still in the possession of his descendants and of which a further version is kept in the Bavarian State Painting Collection, stands at the transition from Stieler's mature phase to his late period and in this respect also occupies a special position in the artist's oeuvre.
Provenance
Passed down by descent in the family of the sitter to the present day.
Literature
Ulrike von Hase: Joseph Stieler 1781-1858. Sein Leben und sein Werk. Kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke (=Materialien zur Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts 4), Munich 1971, p. 137, no. 168
