PLEASE READ SHIPPING DESCRIPTION CAREFULLY BEFORE BUYING!

To learn more about us please click on our profile

Very important and rare pastel portrait of anti-Napoleonic war hero, Austrian Lieutenant Field Marshal Johann Reichsgraf (Count of the Holy Roman Empire) von Klenau, Freiherr (Baron) von Jannowitz (1758-1819). The date of painting (1813) and the fact that its author, well-known German pastelist Johann Heinrich Schmidt, was at that time a court artist in Dresden, provide both the place and time of this work's execution. It was painted in the first days after capitulation of the troops led by the French Marshal Saint-Gyr, in Dresden, on the 11th of November 1813.

Another portrait of Klenau painted by the Austrian artist Johann Baptist Lampi the Younger (well-known through numerous reproductions) recently resurfaced at one of the German auction houses (see photo). It is dated 1814 and possibly offers a more accurate, lifelike portrayal of the Field-Marshal in relation to his age (in 1814 he was already 56 years old). 

On the contrary, "our" 55-year-old Klenau looks much younger: certainly the artist meant "to compliment" Klenau by portraying him in this way.

The author Johann Heinrich Schmidt (1749 Hildburghausen - 1829 Dresden) was a pupil of his father, court painter of Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen, Johann Thomas Schmidt (d. 1790). In 1771-1773, he also studied under J.-B. Pierre at the Parisian Academie Royale. Thereafter, he moved to Turin, where he portrayed the wife of Count Artois (the future King Carl X of France). Back in his native Germany, in 1775, Schmidt became a court painter in Dresden, and was appointed a member of Dresden Academy. From Dresden he made trips to Prague, Vienna, Berlin and other German cities. During a long stay in Berlin he married in 1779 a young and beautiful widow from the Lower Saxony. Afterwards, he travelled to Kurland (present-day Latvia) and Lievland (Lithuania), where he similarly stayed a long time. In 1784, the artist relocated to St. Petersburg and remained there for two years. In Russian capital Schmidt found a truly generous patroness in Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna, the wife of Catherina the Great's son, Grand Duke Paul (the future Tsar Paul I of Russia).

Russian art historian E.G. Perova in her book "Pastel. History. Technique. Restoration. Attribution." (published in Moscow in 2006) presents a list of surviving "Russian" pastel portraits of J.H. Schmidt. She adds that in St. Petersburg, Schmidt was a quite expensive portraitist, who painted exclusively on vellum (a rather costly material in that time). She claims that, today, the majority of J.H. Schmidt's existing works are in Russia (there are in sum as many as seventeen (!) of his works housed in State Historical Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, State Hermitage and in Moscow Pushkin Museum). In St. Petersburg, the artist's sitters were mainly members of various noble families such as Razumovsky, Protasov, Saltykov, etc. He also portrayed Generalissimo Alexander Vasilievich Suvorov (1800).

Further in her book, E.G. Perova implies that J.H. Schmidt painted not particularly large (in height no more than 30 cm) portraits on vellum. They had oval, tondo, rectangular of octagonal form. They were shoulder-length portraits with a slight turn (sic!), face - nearly full-face… "He used to add some bright accents to his portraits (for example, blue sashes in portraits of Sophia Osipovna Apraksina and Natalia Vladimirovna Saltykova)", adds Perova.

After returning to Germany, the artist frequently revisited Vienna and Prague, yet his permanent residence was in Dresden.

*Provenance: inventory sale of a noble castle in Czech Republic (formerly a Bohemian territory and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire)

Condition: fairly good; in original matting and frame 

Creation Year: 1813

Measurements: UNFRAMED: 43,0x35,0cm/16,9x13,8in FRAMED: 59,7x51,3cm/23,5x20,2in

Object Type: Framed pastel

Style: Old Master drawings

Technique:  pastel painted in oval on rectangular sheet of vellum; mounted on stretcher by the artist 

Inscription: signed and dated: Schmidt f. /1813; verso: old legend