(Koblenz-Ehrenbreitstein 1778–1860 Vienna)
Portrait of a gentleman playing a guitar,
oil on canvas, 80.5 x 63 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Vienna, 19th Century;
thence by descent to present owner

Exhibited:
Caracas, Casa Segnini, Exposición de Arte Antiguo, 1941, cat. no. 4 (as Anton Graff de Winterthur)

Literature:
Exposición de Arte Antiguo, exhibition catalogue, 1941, p. 4-5, no. 4 (as Anton Graff de Winterthur)

We are grateful to Helmut Börsch-Supan for suggesting the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

This highly engaging portrait of an elderly gentleman playing a guitar is a fine example of the series of portraits showing contemporary musicians and composers by the German artist, Joseph Willibrord Mähler. Mähler trained for three years with the successful portrait painter Anton Graff (1736–1813) in Dresden, before later moving to Vienna in 1803 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. As a painter the artist is widely known for his portraits of the world-renowned composer Ludwig von Beethoven (1770–1827), with whom he became acquainted in Vienna and of which a fine example is preserved in the collection of the Wien Museum, Vienna (inv. no. 104650). Between 1814 and 1815 the artist portrayed other composers as well and according to the Friedensblätter magazine of 1815, Mähler originally compiled this series for his own private collection. The majority of these works are currently conserved in the collection of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. The present portrait remains unidentified but was probably painted around the same time as this series and could very well represent another contemporary composer.