Bach in Arts - Bach Portrait

B-05

Type:

Bach Painting

Title:

Copy after Haussmann, 1848 (?)

Description:

From the collection of Frau Wilhelmine Burkhardt of Leipzig, first made known in 1914 by Kurzwelly (II) and on stylistic and technical evidence (matt paint, “biedermeier” gold frame, type of canvas and wedge framing) possibly connected with the copy of the Thomasschule portrait (B-01) attested by Hilgenfeldt in 1850, which “the painter Friedrich of Brunswick in 1848” had executed and which “is said to have been excellently realized in every respect”.

Measures:

Oil on canvas
80.6 x 64.5 cm
Unsigned.

Creator:

Painter: Unknown. Gustav Adolf Friedrich (1824-1889), son of Caspar David Friedrich, may have been the painter referred to, though he worked mostly in Dresden as a painter of portraits and animals (Freyse VI).
Year: 1848 ?

History:

In 1931 the portrait vanished again but in 1955/56 reappeared via the music antiquarian Hans Schneider of Tutzing in the private ownership of Baron Van Tuyll Van Serooskerken (Dr Van Tuyll) of Utrecht in Holland, who later moved to Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Its new owner had it examined by an art historian “the great painting expert Privy Councillor Dr. M. J. Friedlander”, who estimated it as a “valuable work of about 1750 by an accomplished German painter”, rejected Kurzwelly’s theory of its origin and suggested that it was an authentic copy from Haussmann’s studio or even from his own hand. After being on temporary loan to the Faculty of Music of Toronto University, it appeared as no. 114 in the auction catalogue of Sotheby, Parke Bernet, New York on November 28, 1972 with a valuation of $20,000 to $ 25,000. This expressive likeness would have an iconographical value even as a late copy, since on the one hand it clearly shows several features of the Haussmann portrait of 1746 (B-01) before its restorations and on the other hand probably served the Leipzig restorer Walter Kuhn, who according to Albrecht Kurzwelly knew it well, as a pattern for his “thorough restoration” of the Thomasschule picture in 1913, which would quite naturally account for the extensive similarities between the two. Significantly, this picture was used in error as the frontispiece for the 4^th and 5^th editions of Schweitzer's book on Bach in 1922; this same confusion with the Thomasschule picture occurs in the biographies by Rudolf Steglich (Potsdam, 1935) and A.-E. Cherbuliez (Olten, 1946).

Current Location:

Reproduced from "Bach-Jahrbuch", 1914

Photograph by:

E. Krömer, Leipzig

Comments:

Buy item at:

N/A

Source/Links: Bach-Dokumente IV (1979)
Contributor: Thomas Braatz (December 2007); Mark McMahan - Birmingham, Alabama (February 2010)