(Wohlau 1720–1772 Berlin)
An equestrian portrait of King Frederick II of Prussia, wearing the star and the sash of the order of the Black Eagle, holding a commander’s baton,
oil on canvas, 144 x 122 cm, framed

We are grateful to Reimar F. Lacher for endorsing the attribution.

Equestrian portraits of Frederick the Great are surprisingly rare. None from the early years of his reign are known, marking this impressive painting a rare discovery.

Frederick the Great is shown as a young King on a rearing horse, holding a baton. He is wearing a richly silver-embroidered blue velvet 'justaucorps', the dress uniform of the elite infantry regiment no. 15, 1. 'Battalion Garde', of the type he wore before the First Silesian War (1740–42). It was only a little later that he began to prefer to wear – and to be depicted – in the simpler 'Interimsrock' without any adornments that became a famous trademark of his official iconography. His tailor Helle made both uniform types, of whom a number survive, for the King.

This rare portrait is almost a singularity in Prussian art. Together with a portrait of his brother and presumptive heir, Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, it seems to have been conceived as a pair of paintings.
Since Frederick had no children and heirs, August Wilhelm was styled ‘Prince of Prussia’ and performed the role of Crown Prince. The pendant can be found in the collection of the Historisches Museum Bayreuth. The fact that the pendant apparently was in Bayreuth for at least a century would appear to suggest that they were both a commission by, or indeed given to, the sister of the two depicted, the Markgravine Wilhelmine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1709–1758), who turned her somewhat provincial residence into a cultured centre of the Enlightenment. The painting in Bayreuth (oil on canvas, 146 x 128 cm), shows the young prince Augustus Wilhelm in the yellow uniform of his regiment, the famous ‘Gelben Reiter’ (2nd Regiment of Cuirassiers ‘Prince Wilhelm’) also on a rearing horse, which is identical in outline and posture to the horse in the present portrait, only in reverse. Hempel also painted a portrait of Prince Henry on horseback, as well as another version of the portrait of August Wilhelm at Oranienburg Castle.

There is a smaller and slightly coarser variant of the portrait of August Wilhelm conserved in the Bode Museum, Berlin and attributed to Hempel in full (oil on canvas, 115.2 x 102.5 cm). The sitter in the Bode Museum portrait appears older than the sitter in the portrait in Bayreuth. It has been suggested that the painting in the Bode Museum is the portrait of Prince Henry of Prussia which is mentioned in the earlier literature. Henry became Colonel-in-chief of the 2nd Regiment of Cuirassiers ‘Prince Wilhelm’ after the early death of Prince August Wilhelm in 1758, which would explain that he is wearing the same uniform and decoration. In fact, in an illustration from 1902 the painting now in the Bode Museum is identified as by Hempel and as depicting Prince Henry (see P. Seidel [ed.], Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch. Forschungen und Abbildungen zur Geschichte der Hohenzollern in Brandenburg-Preußen, vol. 6, Berlin 1902, p. 15). It would appear plausible that Hempel reused a compositional scheme succesfully applied earlier, circa 1740–1745, in the present painting and its pendant in Bayreuth, when he later painted the portrait of Prince Henry.

No other version of the present work is known. Both portraits seem to be inspired by types developed by Pesne and Hempel, and especially the execution of the King’s portrait is close to Pesne’s style. It is unlikely that the portrait of the King was painted from life, especially as Frederick had a pronounced aversion to sitting for portraits, which he consistently refused because he was convinced that he was ugly: ‘You have to be Apollo, Mars or Adonis to be painted, but since I do not have the honour of resembling one of these gentlemen, I have withdrawn my face from the painters’ brush as much as it depended on me’, he wrote to Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert in 1774. Furthermore, he said to the Marquis d’Argens: ‘There is so much talk about the fact that we terrestrial kings are made in the image of God. Then I look in the mirror and am obliged to say to myself: How unlucky for God!’. The present portrait therefore represents a highly idealised portrait of the youthful King, and a date of circa 1745 would appear plausible.

Gottfried Hempel arrived in Berlin in 1743 and was appointed court painter to August Wilhelm, and he was also employed by the Queen Mother at Monbijou Palace, Berlin and for Prince Henry at Rheinsberg Palace, Rheinsberg. He belonged to the circle of the writer Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Gleim, whose portrait by Hempel (Gleimhaus, Halberstadt) offers a good comparison with the present work, and especially with Augustus Wilhelm’s likeness, which was much more likely painted from life.