The Search for the Portrait that Belonged to Kittel Pages at The Face Of Bach
The Queens College Lecture of March 21, 2001 - Page 7 - The 1746 Haussmann Portrait
The Face Of Bach
This remarkable photograph is not a computer generated composite; the original of the Weydenhammer Portrait Fragment, all that
remains of the portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach that belonged to his pupil Johann Christian Kittel, is resting gently on the surface
of the original of the 1748 Elias Gottlob Haussmann Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach.
1748 Elias Gottlob Haussmann Portrait, Courtesy of William H. Scheide, Princeton, New Jersey
Weydenhammer Portrait Fragment, ca. 1733, Artist Unknown, Courtesy of the Weydenhammer Descendants
Photograph by Teri Noel Towe
©Teri Noel Towe, 2001, All Rights Reserved
The Search for the Portrait that Belonged to Kittel
The Queens College Lecture of March 21, 2001
Page 7
The 1746 Haussmann Portrait
The 1746 Elias Gottlob Haussmann portrait, now in the Altes Rathaus in Leipzig, that has been described by more than one
commentator as the "Ursprung" of Bach iconography. It is so called simply because it is both the earlier and the much longer
known exemplar of the two authentic portraits from life that Haussmann is so far known to have painted of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Sadly, the 1746 Haussmann has had less than an easy time of it over the course of two and a half centuries.
Here is how most of us think of it, in the form that it took after the 1913 Restoration, undertaken by Walter Kühn and supervised by
Albrecht Kurzwelly; this particular photograph, from the late Werner Felix's 1985 monograph on Bach, is the best I have ever seen:
For the present, I shall bypass the discussion of the problems with the provenance of the 1746 Haussmann, the whereabouts of
which between 1746 and 1801/1802 cannot be documented with any certainty whatsoever, and focus on the problems associated
with its condition. The 1746 Haussmann portrait is to the Bach iconography what "The Last Supper" is to the da Vinci
iconography: the unfortunate victim of generations of good intentions. Relatively early on, I surmise during the years immediately
after August Eberhard Müller gave it to the Thomasschule at the time of his departure to take up his duties as Court Capellmeister in
Weimar, the painting hung in some sort of a heavily trafficked and regularly used public venue and became coated with grime, soot,
and God knows what else. Hilgenfeldt remarked on its poor estate in 1850 (and he was not the first): "A pity that time has begun to
have its effect on the painting," he wrote. "It is much darker and the outlines are becoming blurred." (Neumann, BDL, page 401)
Prof. Neumann recounts the subsequent history tersely:
"In 1852, it was 'freshened up' and in about 1879 the Dresden landscape painter Friedrich Preller the younger
(1838-1901) restored it drastically and overpainted it heavily. When Bach's bones were identified in 1894/95 the Berlin
restorer Schönfelder cleaned and renovated it once more and contemporary reports said that the effect was 'distinctly
more expressive and detailed' (His II) than after the recent overpainting." (Neumann BDL, pp. 401-402)
On the left is a photogravure that, I believe, shows what the painting looked like after Preller had worked on it. The photogravure on
the right (one of the plates in the Exhumation Report of 1895) shows the canvas as it looked immediately after the Schönfelder
restoration.
Prof. Neumann continues:
"In 1913 it was presented on permanent loan to the Stadtsgeschichtliches Museum of Leipzig whose then director,
Albrecht Kurzwelly, had it 'thoroughly put in order with modern methods of restoration... by the Leipzig painter Walter
Kühn (1855-1929), who had a long-standing reputation as a picture restorer' [citation], in the course of which the
original signature was uncovered, ..." (Neumann BDL, p. 402)
A lot more than the signature was uncovered. Kurzwelly and Kühn cleaned off all of the overpaint that the previous restorers had
added in the course of their respective efforts. In other words, Kurzwelly and Kühn removed all of the paint that they did not
believe to be Haussmann's. Here is the result, juxtaposed with a contemporaneous photograph of the painting as it looked after
Kühn had finished his careful and conservative "in painting":
And here is the same "before and after", but this time a close-up of the head. (Isn't it amazing what you can do these days with a
flatbed scanner?)
The damage to the surface of the painting is heartrending to contemplate. The loss of paint on the face has been great, but,
gruesome as the comparison is, it is one that must be made, simply as a reminder that the image that we all carry in our psyches of
the 1746 Haussmann portrait is not necessarily -- in fact, almost certainly isn't -- the image that left Haussmann's studio in 1746.
Amongst other things, the restored 1746 Haussmann portrait cannot be relied on to supply a reliable standard for the shape of the
bridge of the nose, the upper lip, much of the lower left lip, much of the right cheek and jowl, much of the upper left cheek, and a
significant portion of the right eyelid. The white spots, by the way, indicate the places where the original paint and priming coat, or
bolus, had disappeared right down to the surface of the canvass, necessitating the careful application of gesso to the surface of the
canvass to bring those areas back up to the level of the bolus surface so that the restorative "in painting" would be even with the
remains of the original painted surface. The dark grey areas, such as those across the bridge of the nose and the upper left cheek
are the places where Haussmann's original painted surface has been abraded, down to the bolus.
In trying to make the correct decisions when "in painting" the damaged areas to make the painting at least presentable to an eager
viewing public, Walter Kühn appears to have relied to a great extent on a direct copy of the painting that had been made a few years
before it was "restored" for the first time. It is believed that that painting is the copy painted by one Friedrich of Braunschweig in
1848, the one that is described by Hilgenfeldt as "said to have been excellently realized in every respect". (Neumann BDL, p. 403)
The illustration comes from the Bach Jahrbuch, 1914, in which the painting's existence was disclosed by Prof. Kurzwelly. On both
"stylistic and technical evidence (matt paint, "biedermeier" gold frame, type of canvas and wedge framing)", Kurzwelly suggested
that it was "possibly connected with the copy of the [1746 Haussmann] attested by Hilgenfeldt in 1850." (Neumann, BDL, p. 403) It
cannot be said for certain the copy by Friedrich to which Hilgenfeldt alludes, however, because the canvas is not signed or dated.
When the copy is placed beside the original, as restored by Kühn , the degree to which it influenced Kühn is easy to discern, and
there can be no doubt that, despite some obvious differences, what appears to be fundamentally a meticulous copy of the 1746
Haussmann original has evidentiary value, as a secondary source of significance.
You will recall that I confessed to a tremendous gaffe on the page on the Bach portraits that I had begun to build at my personal
internet homepage, the page which prompted the owners of the Weydenhammer Portrait Fragment to get in touch with me. You
also will recall that I said that I was in good company, though, because Charles Sanford Terry had made the same mistake. For that
page, I scanned the frontispiece of the Terry biography of 1928. The frontispiece is described as the 1746 Haussmann Portrait,
when it is in fact the copy believed to have been painted by Friedrich.
The 1746 Haussmann portrait has been restored again recently, and in its present state it may now arguably be truer to the
Haussmann original than Walter Kühn's restoration was, but, as a primary source of information about Bach's physiognomy, its
value is severely limited.
The 1746 Haussmann portrait is useful as a "back up" and as a corrective, nothing more.
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