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Saturday, 03 March 2012

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates – Portrait of Duchesse de Morny

I am pleased to add a new image to my website – a portrait of Duchesse Sophie de Morny (1838-96). The image appeared in a blog entry at http://oliaklodvenitiens.wordpress.com; and I was alerted to its existence by a colleague and fellow Winterhalter enthusiast, Emmanuel Burlion (thank you!).

Unfortunately, no further information about the date, size, provenance, history, or current location of this portrait is available at the moment.

However, it is most likely to be a portrait referred to in the posthumous list of works compiled by Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s nephew, Franz Wild, as La Duchesse de Morny, velour bleu, 1868 (cf. Wild 1894, 45; Winterhalter 1987/88, 235 (no 371); Barilo von Reisberg 2007, no 846).

The research indicates that Winterhalter painted the Russian-born Duchesse de Morny on at least five separate occasions (see catalogue entries nos 725, 752, 781, 804, 846). Of these, only one portrait was previously identified with any certainty: no 752 (1863, oil on canvas, 94 x 73 cm, Musée National du Château de Compiègne). Another portrait, no 804 (c. 1865, oil on canvas) appeared in an 1866 watercolour by Jean Sorieul (1824-71) of the bedroom study of the Duc de Morny at the Hôtel de Lassay (collection Pierre Fabius, Paris, 1978) and was later reproduced in a c. 1920s Spanish publication on 19^th-Century painting as being in a Private Collection. Its present location and further information remain unknown.

It is therefore a thrill to add such a rare find as another image by Franz Xaver Winterhalter to my repository of knowledge on the artist. It is now placed on the https://franzxaverwinterhalter.wordpress.com/franz-xaver-winterhalter-works-1866-1873/ page of the catalogue under no 846.

Friday, 10 February 2012

25 Sigl_Vespermann Winterhalter

Friday, 10 February 2012

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates

Another new image is that of no 28e – the portrait of the renowned Bavarian sculptor, Ludwig von Schwanthaler, of c. 1825-26, which was recently posted on http://stadtmuseum.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/. Schwanthaler was a student at the Munich Academy around the same time as Winterhalter, and it is most likely that the portrait stems from this date, and prior to the sculptor’s departure forItaly in 1826. The dating of the portrait is also helped by a prominent watermark on the paper, which bears the date 1826.

The same website yielded another image of a work which was previously unknown to me, and it is with great pleasure that I am adding a new entry to the Catalogue Raisonne – no 28f, portrait of the celebrated opera singer, Katharina Sigl-Vespermann (1802-1877), of c. 1825. As per the explanation above, it is most likely that Winterhalter created the original portrait drawing on which this lithograph was based (it is signed in plate lower right Winterhalter fecit).

For more details, see https://franzxaverwinterhalter.wordpress.com/franz-xaver-winterhalter-works-1805-1830/

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates – Travels in Germany

Thursday, 9 February 2012

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates – Travels in Germany

It has been often claimed that upon completion of his studies at the Bavarian Academy of Arts, Winterhalter travelled widely; and there are even erroneous claims that his first tour of Italy took place in 1828. The fact remains that in 1827-1828 Winterhalter did do some travel and sightseeing, but not only he did not cross German borders, he did not even cross the borders of the Kingdom of Bavaria.

As I write in my forthcoming dissertation on the artist:

The artist completed his studies at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in summer of 1827, and undertook a sabbatical travelling to Landshut, Regensburg, Nürenberg, Pommersfelden, and other towns. He visited museums, galleries, and historical buildings, exclaiming in a letter to his father: “Man muß etwas sehen, um es zu machen!”^{^[1]} It is interesting to observe that at this time Italy was preferred destination for German and European artists.^{^[2]} Winterhalter mentions numerous comings and goings of fellow painters to and from Rome, and even his father urged him to go to Italy “wie alle anderen Maler”.^{^[3]} However, Winterhalter remained immune to the allure of the south, and throughout his post-academic journeys he did not even cross Bavarian borders. It would seem that Ludwig Tieck’s (1773-1853) widely popular Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), where one of the characters advises an aspiring artist against travelling to Italy with the following words: “You will not become an Italian and you will not be able to remain a German… we are not in favour of antiquity… our subject is Nordic nature”,^{^[4]} was more influential on Winterhalter’s psyche that Goethe’s famous German longing for South. It is possible, that the inherent reluctance ofGermany’s lower social classes to move beyond one’s domains, financial restrictions, and stipend limitations also came into consideration at this point in time, thus preventing the artist from travelling to Italy and opting instead to return to Munich.

I am pleased to add further images to my catalogue – nos 32a and 32b – that illustrate this period of Winterhalter’s career. These images come courtesy of a private collector, who has an enviable collection of Winterhalter’s drawings and studies (as well as a number of outstanding works on paper by other artists).

[1] “One has to see it in order to make it”: letter from Franz Xaver inMunich to his parents in Menzenschwand, 3 August 1827; quoted in Mayer 1998, 92.

[2] See further discussion on this subject in Ulrich Finke, German Painting from Romanticism to Expressionism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 31.

[3] „… like all other artists…“, quoted in Mayer 1998, 25.

[4] Quoted in Finke 1974, 18.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates

Very few known engravings and lithographs from Winterhalter’s Freiburg-im-Bresgau period have survived. I emphasise the word known as a number of prints on which Winterhalter may have worked or collaborated were published without bearing his name in margin under image as was the custom of the day.

The research indicates that the majority of Winterhalter’s known prints (i.e. the ones bearing his name in margin under image) were executed during his Munich period. Unless a more exact date has been discovered, the dates for Munich period prints can be roughly amended to c. 1823-1830.

Winterhalter’s involvement in print production was varied. He was employed to create charcoal or watercolour copies of paintings as guides or aids for lithographers and / or actual drawings on lithographic stone from which prints were to be made (these are usually marked Gez[eichnet]. von Winterhalter: see nos 25 – 28; or Lith. von Winterhalter: see no 29a). Winterhalter also produced original drawings or watercolours which were later lithographed by the artist himself and / or other printmakers (these are usually marked Winterhalter fecit: for example, see nos 28c, 28f, etc).

Nos 23 and 24 support an argument that at some point there were in existence original drawings and watercolours by Winterhalter which were either copies after works by other artists, or his own original compositions created expressly to be engraved and / or lithographed. Unfortunately, most of these works have not been located to date, and most of them are only known from lithographs created after them (as indicated in the catalogue entries nos 28b, 28c, 28e, 28f, etc.)

The research indicates that Winterhalter’s lithographic output during the Munich period can be roughly divided into three sections: prints after the Old Masters; prints after contemporary portraits; and prints after contemporary artists. The numerical order of the catalogue list has been amended slightly to group these items accordingly.

Recent research has uncovered further lithographs by Winterhalter after the Old Masters, which form new entries on the list:

– no 24d – a lithograph after Giovanno Francesco Caroto (1470-1546);

– no 24e – a lithograph after Adrian Brouwer (c.1605-c.1638)

– no 24f – a lithograph after David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690)

– no 24h – a lithograph after after Carlo Maratta (1625-1713)

– no 24g – a lithograph after [a painting attributed to] Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), though conflicting evidence points that the latter work could also have been done by Hermann Winterhalter.

As Munich was predominantly Winterhalter’s base between 1823 and 1830, it is identified as the most likely place where these works would have been created. Works that are known to have been produced during Winterhalter’s travels in Germany in 1827 (especially in Landshut – see nos 31a and 32b); as well as those drawn or painted in Karlsruhe are marked accordingly.

For more details, see https://franzxaverwinterhalter.wordpress.com/franz-xaver-winterhalter-works-1805-1830/

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Empress Eugénie of 1854 (no. 495)

Sunday, 5 February 2012

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Empress Eugénie of 1854 (no. 495)

I have recently received a charming email from a curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, USA, correcting one of my entries by informing me that no 495, portrait of Empress Eugénie of 1854, is now in the Museum’s collection.

The portrait measures 125 x 95 cm, and it is signed, dated, and inscribed lower centre as painted in Paris in 1854. It is believed to have been commissioned personally by the Empress and paid from her own funds: this fact that was recognised by the French Government in 1881 when it returned the portrait to the Empress in exile together with other paintings and works of art as her private property. The portrait was placed at Eugénie’s home at Farnborough Hill and remained there at least until 1884, when it was gifted to Mme Eugène Rouher (née Marie Cornélie Léontine Conchon (1822-1890)), widow of a prominent Second Empire politician and statesman, and remained in her possession in Paris until her death in 1890. The painting then passed through a number of private collections, and was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with funds provided by the Agnes Cullen Arnold Endowment Fund, in 2010.

In spite of its importance, the portrait was exhibited publicly only four times. It was lent by the Empress to the Exposition Universelle of 1855, and to the Vienna Kunstverein in 1856. More than 130 year would pass before the portrait reappeared again, this time at the Winterhalter exhibition in London’s National Gallery and the Petit Palais in Paris in 1987-88. In 2009 it was lent to “Napoleon and Eugenie” exhibition at the Nassau County Museum of Art by its then owner, Christopher Forbes.

The portrait remained well-known through lithographs by Léon Noël (an edition of which was also shown at the Parisian Exposition Universelle of 1855), as well as through a number of copies and miniatures in porcelain and enamel (examples of these abound in public and private collections worldwide). Most recently, of course, it has been popularised as a poster available from countless online retailers.

I am sincerely overjoyed that this work of the utmost historical importance, which is also among the key paintings of Winterhalter’s oeuvre, has finally entered a public collection, where it rightfully belongs.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates

Sunday, 5 February 2012

Franz Xaver Winterhalter – Catalogue Updates

A number of early portraits in the Winterhalter catalogue were loosely dated from the late 1810s to the early 1820s. The research indicates that from 1818 to 1822 Franz Xaver Winterhalter was apprenticed in Freiburg-im-Bresgau at the studios of Schuler and Herder. Early 1823 he briefly returned to Menzenschwand, leaving for Munich shortly afterwards. Therefore, the date of a number of early portrait drawings and watercolours (see nos 2 – 7, 18 – 20) were updated to c. 1823 to coincide with the artist’s Menzenschwand sojourn of that year; and Menzenschwand was also identified as the most likely place where the early drawings and watercolours would have been painted by the young artist (see nos 1-8, 18-20).

23 Laule Winterhalter

Nos 19 and 20 were dated by Mayer from around 1830. On stylistic grounds I believe these to be earlier works from the Menzenschwand period of c. 1823.

The exception is made for nos 21 and 22: they display a more mature style, and I agree with Mayer who dates them from around c. 1830, and either Karlsruhe or Menzenschwand-Hinterdorf identified as the most likely place where they would have been drawn.

The title of no.5 was amended to Jacob Benedikt Laule (1748-1829), Step-Grandfather of the Artist. The sitter was the second husband of Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s paternal grandmother, Anna Winterhalter (née Schlageter, 1745-1818), whom he married in 1786.

It is believed that no 4 was lithographed by Josef Anton Selb (1784-1832), c. 1826.

For more details, see https://franzxaverwinterhalter.wordpress.com/franz-xaver-winterhalter-works-1805-1830/

John Lucas vs Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Excerpt from a Review of

John Lucas, portrait painter, 1828-1874: a memoir of his life mainly deduced from the correspondence of his sitters, by his son, Arthur Lucas (London: Methuen 1910)

“Our admiration of the book itself and for Mr Arthur Lucas’s filial piety only increases our regret at remaining unconvinced as to the claims of John Lucas to a place in the front rank of painters. The Victorian era, especially in the earlier years, is in fact a somewhat dismal record of competent mediocrity. Genius, or what remained of it, died with Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1830, and many years were to elapse before it again showed its head above the soil in British art.

“It was a dull, drab period, for which the artists themselves cannot be held wholly responsible. The patrons of art liked paintings which they could understand, and which reflected their own ideas and personalities to the exclusion of the painter’s. Painters were only too complaisant, and under the presidency of Sir Francis Grant mediocrity reigned supreme at the Royal Academy, and thus received the hallmarks of authority…

“The survey of a career like that of John Lucas enables us to understand why in certain circles Winterhalter should have been preferred.”

Review of “Princess Alice” by F.X. Winterhalter (1857)

Review of the portrait of Princess Alice by F.X. Winterhalter (1857)

“The likeness of Princess Alice, taken in 1857, by the Court painter, Herr Winterhalter, presents to our eyes a well-grown young lady of fourteen, who, as the novelists say, might be older. It is a fact very humiliating to physiognomists that the character and expression of a face are greatly influenced by the arrangement of the hair; and we suppose this is the reason why we are not forcibly struck by the resemblance of the young Princess to her parents.

“Nevertheless, we can with little difficulty trace in these delicate features certain general repetitions of the family type. There are “the ripe Guelph cheek and the straight Coburg brow,” though the former is less Guelphic in its ripeness than we have observed to be the case with other cheeks among princes of the blood royal, while the Coburg brow loses a little of its individuality by the partial adoption of a coiffure recently in vogue at the Tuileries.

“Mr Lane has considerately softened the harsh materialism, and modified the Dutch flatness which are so distinctive of the Winterhalter school of painting; and at the same time he has preserved all the best qualities belonging to an artist who is inspired with no comprehensive or elevated ideas of human life.” [See cat. no. 582]

Review of Four Princess by F.X. Winterhalter (1849)

Review of Four Princess by F.X. Winterhalter (1849):

“This graceful group of royal children is worthy of this courtly painter’s best efforts, and in its pleasing arrangement, the prettiness of the faces and attitudes, and cheerfulness of the landscape, one is almost unconsciously reminded of his first work by which he achieved celebrity, and though the vistas of the Isle of Wight may not be as classical as the heights of Fiesole, still there is somehow an identity of touch and feeling in both figure and landscape, which makes it the more regrettable that this accomplished painter should ever have abandoned his first style.

“Mr Winterhalter’s sojourn in England has, however, not been void of the benefit which ever accrues to those who come in contacts with its colourists. A more chastened feeling pervades his family groups, and the light and shade is more pleasantly subdued, the varied expressions of these pretty juvenile heads, from the pensive to the sportive, are rendered with masterly discrimination. The motive, too, of arranging flowers, a favourite pastime, is gracefully told. The way in which the lights and darks of the dresses are contrasted show no less the well-skilled hand in telling effects. The neat and careful modelling of the engraving, not less than the pleasing effect of the design, entitle the engraver, Mr. G. Richardson Jackson, to the highest commendation.” (See cat. no. 359)

Exhibition of “The Royal Family” and “Prince of Wales” by F.X. Winterhalter in 1847

Review of the Exhibition of The Royal Family and Prince of Wales by F.X. Winterhalter at St James’s Palace in 1847:

“The Banqueting Hall, in St James’s Palace, has been turned into an exhibition room, and the public are admitted by orders from the Lord Chamberlain to see “the two royal pictures,” painted by Winterhalter, for the Queen, in January of the present year.

“The small picture is a full-length portrait of the Prince of Wales in a sailor’s dress – a black straw cap on his head, little bits of blue about his shirt, black horn-buttons to his white jean trousers, his handkerchief tied about his neck in a sailor’s knot, and his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his trousers. Such is a description of the picture, but little can be said in favour of it as a work of art. The attitude is easy enough, but the face wants character. What would it have been in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s hands? Look at his Master Crewe as Henry VIII., so full of character and colour. With all its defects, this portrait of the Prince is a national picture. One warms to the dress, and “Rule, Britannia,” and “Ye mariners of England,” rush willingly to the lips. [Cat. no. 319]

“The second of “the two royal pictures” is what painters call a family group. It is a very large picture, representing the Queen and Prince Albert and their five children. It is almost as much an indoor as an outdoor scene. The Queen and the Prince are represented seated on a sofa – the Queen in a white dress and the order of the Garter, and the Prince in a suit of black, with black silk stockings. On the Queen’s right, and standing by her side, is the Prince of Wales, in a red velvet dress, and immediately in front of the Queen is her Majesty’s second son, in the act of running to play with his three sisters, who form a charming group on the left of the composition. The two elder Princesses are playing with their youngest sister on a cushion on the ground, and the Prince Albert is represented touching the Queen’s hand, and directing her attention to the group before her, while his left hand hangs lackadaisically down, as if he was fond of showing off his wristband. On the Prince’s left is a table, with fruit upon it, and on her Majesty’s right is a vase of flowers. [Cat.no. 316]

“Such is a brief description of a very interesting picture; one, however, which cannot be compared for a moment with the Pembroke family at Wilton, the Marlborough family at Blenheim, or the Cornaro family at Northumberland House, but richer in colour than we had been led to expect from the pictures, at Sir Robert Peel’s, of the Queen and the Prince by the same artist. The “exhibition,” if such it may be called, will well repay a visit. We may add that the two pictures are to be engraved – both, we believe, by Mr. Cousins, who never suffers a work to pass from his hands without adding to its excellences.”