Margarete Luise Lahmeyer , musician, formerly of London. Highly gifted, as a child, she had piano lessons with Clara Schumann. In 1896 she played in Leipzig with Richard Strauss. http://www.kettererkunst.com/details-e.php?obnr=100501532&anummer=298 Lot: 103 Sale 298 / XXth Century Classics Dec. 05, 2005 Kaulbach, Friedrich August von Date of origin: 1894 Estimate: 9,000 EUR / 10,620 USD Margarete Lahmeyer Oil on canvas , um 1894 Zimmermanns 334. Signed lower right inside the oval. 156 x 120 cm ( 61,4 x 47,2 in). The depicted is Margarete Lahmeyer, born in London on 3. November 1872 as daughter of the music professor Bernhard Lahmeyer. The depicted is related to the painter through Kaulbach's first wife Mina Lahmeyer. Highly gifted, the child had piano lessons with Clara Schumann. In 1896 she played in Leipzig with Richard Strauss. PROVENIENZ: A gift from the artist to the depicted on the occasion of her marriage in 1900. Helmut Frhr. Karg von Bebenburg. Private collection South Germany. Ausstellung: Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung 1894, no. 3514 (with the label on the stretcher). Kunstverein, Munich 1898. Possibly Glaspalast, Munich 1898, cat. no. 471 ('ein Bildnis Frl. L.'). LITERATUR: Compare Alfred Rosenberg, Friedrich August von Kaulbach, Bielefeld/Leipzig 1900, ill. 74 of a different version of the same sujet (Zimmermanns 335). Formal portraits of the self-assured and affluent bourgeoisie had deep aesthetic roots in late 19th-century Munich. Three painters – Franz von Lenbach, Friedrich August von Kaulbach and Franz von Stuck – vied simultaneously for the favour of the public at that time. All three of them, like so many artists of their day, made names for themselves primarily as portraitists, seeking to surpass each other especially in their portraits of ladies in the exquisite rendering of fabric, the charms of their sitters and the secret sensuousness they signalled. They were portrayed ideally, in simple yet fetching poses. In his portraits Friedrich August von Kaulbach also drew on effective patterns handed down from English portrait painting – here Gainsborough especially springs to mind. The grace of the young lady, who was distantly related to the artist, is enhanced by markedly simple yet exceptionally elegant clothing. Thus the composition has been drawn into an oval as if the sitter were looking at herself in a mirror. Such effects were bound to please and the public in those days acclaimed them gratefully, even enthusiastically. The decline of the grande bourgeoisie at the close of the first world war meant the end of the formal portrait since there were no longer any patrons for it. Their tastes redirected, they now opted for something entirely different. [KD]
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