B-13

Type:

Bach Engraving

Title:

Engraving by S.G. Kütner, 1774

Description:

Oldest graphic representation of Bach, inscribed: „Gemalt von Haussmann / gestochen von S.G. Kütner. Leipz. 1774”.
This drawing was obviously intended as a memento and probably made at the instigation of the last-named, who sent it to J.N. Forkel on 20 April 1774 with a letter recommending it as a “recent etching, finely done and rather accurate, of my dear late father's portrait”. It is highly probable that he also provided his own Haussmann picture as the model (Smend II, Freyse VI), particularly if one assumes that this was the Haussmann replica of 1748 (B-02), the only portrait of the Haussmann group with the waistcoat similarly depicted. In other respects this impressive mirror-image of the original, more severe and grave, with the canon-sheet now outside the portrait and unsigned, and the costume more modern, was probably engraved by Kütner under Bause’s influence and served as model or inspiration for numerous other engravings and lithographs without the canon and even for one oil painting (B-14), in which naturally the conventional trappings of large format and large-scale engraving (round frame, pedestal, epitaph) were ignored.

Measures:

22.3 X 15.6 cm.

Creator:

Engraver: S.G. Kütner (1747-1828). This painter and etcher who was a drawing-master in Mitau from 1775 on, was a pupil of Johann Friedrich Bause (1738-1814) at the Leipzig Art Academy and a fellow-student and friend of Johann Sebastian Bach the Younger (1748-1778), the son of C.P.E. Bach (cf. no. 600).
Year: 1774

History:

Current Location:

Museum für Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig.

Photograph by:

Rolf Langematz, Leipzig

Comments:

Buy book at:

Amazon.de [Bach-Dokumente]

Source/Links: Bach-Dokumente: Bilddokumente zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs: Bd 4 (Bärenreiter, 1979) | The Bach Reader, edited by Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, Revised Edition (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1966)
Contributor: Aryeh Oron & Thomas Braatz (December 2007 - January 2008)