B-03

Type:

Bach Painting

Title:

Copy after Haussmann, 1791

Description:

The derivation from the Leipzig Haussmann portrait (B-01) acknowledged by the signature is evident from the identical details of costume, while a greater resemblance in the features to the Haussmann replica of 1748 (B-02) can be due either to David referring to that picture as well, or to the greater similarity at that time between the two.
This portrait, pleasingly set against an oval background in late 18^th-century style, is important in Bach iconography as the first copy by another hand to be made from the as yet unrestored Haussmann original.

Measures:

Oil on canvas
87 x 65.5 cm
Signed on the back: "copirt nach Haußmann 1746 / J. M. David 1791"
There is also an indication of ownership in uncouth handwriting: "Ex collectione G. Pölchau 1816".

Creator:

Painter: Johann Marcus David (1764-1810), a historical, landscape and portrait painter who was born and mostly worked in Hamburg.
Year: 1791.

History:

Regarding its origin, it may well have been commissioned and first owned by Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814), who is known to have owned a portrait after 1791, and passed from him to Georg Pölchau. When it was first published, the then owner, the Rev. D. Ernst Breest of Berlin, stated in the 1917 Bach-Jahrbuch that after Pölchau's death in 1836 a certain Chief Archivist von L. and his daughter Ida von L. who died in 1915, were the owners, and that he inherited the picture from them. The last owner, Frau Helene Breest, died in the fighting in Berlin in 1945 and her painting was lost.

Current Location:

Reproduced from a photographic original by Max Schneider

Photograph by:

Höschel, Halle.

Comments:

Buy item at:

N/A

Source/Links: Bach-Dokumente IV (1979)
Contributor: Thomas Braatz (December 2007)