This portrait by Anselm Feuerbach, the only nineteenth-century German painting in the collection of the Norton Simon Museum, was executed while the artist was living in France. Drawn to Paris by the work of Thomas Couture, Feuerbach became seized by the spontaneity found in French and Italian painting, as opposed to the laborious academicism of German art. This unfinished portrait offers an important window into Feuerbach’s working method and his assimilation of the lessons he learned abroad. The quick, confident outlines of his sitter’s sturdy silhouette, on view here, eventually gave way to the brushless, Ingresian surface of his finished works, indicated here only in the sitter’s face.
Details
- Artist Name: Anselm Feuerbach (German, 1829-1880)
- Title: Old Woman Seated
- Date: 1853
- Medium: Oil on linen
- Dimensions: 43 x 33-5/8 in. (109.2 x 85.4 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1975.01.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
[Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, in 1929].
William Dieterle, Hollywood and Germany, by inheritance to;
Elizabeth (Mrs. William) Dieterle, Vogging, Germany, sold 1975 to;
The Norton Simon Foundation.
Six Centuries of Portraiture from the Permanent Collection
- Norton Simon Museum, 1989-11-02 to 1990-12-16
Gaze: Portraiture After Ingres
- Norton Simon Museum, 2009-10-30 to 2010-04-05
- Uhde-Bernays, Hermann, Feuerbach: Beschreibender Katalog seiner sämtlichen Gemälde, 1929,
- Ecker, Jürgen, Anselm Feuerbach, Leben und Werk: Kritischer Katalog der Gemälde Ölskizzen und Ölstudien, 1991,
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1125 p. 374
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