Portrait of Margret Halseber
|
| Portrait of Margret Halseber |
|---|
| around 1550 |
| Oil on oak |
| 35 × 27 cm |
| Suermondt Ludwig Museum Aachen |
The portrait of Margret Halseber is the portrait of a woman apparently affected by hirsutism .
The 16th century painting has been attributed to various artists. It is currently considered a work by Willem Key . From the image of Margret Halseber at least three or four versions were produced; one of them had the name of the person portrayed on it. This copy was in the possession of the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen . It was stolen in 1972 and has not been found since.
description
The picture shows the head of an older woman with a split, gray beard in three-quarter profile from the left. She has a long, narrow, curved nose, looks at the viewer with dark eyes, of which the right one appears clouded in the black and white photograph of the museum, and wears a white, hood-like headgear. A white piece of clothing can also be seen under the dark outer clothing in the neckline. The background is kept evenly dark. At the top left of the Aachen copy, the name of the person shown can be read in lighter capital letters; this lettering is missing on the other known versions of the picture. Margret Halseber is said to have been a resident of Basel , further details about her person are not known.
Attributions
The painting is not signed. At the auction after the death of Johann Heinrich Beissel, the Aachen copy was attributed to Albrecht Dürer , in the Aachen catalog of 1882 the Utrecht painter Anthonis Mor van Dashorst called Antonio Moro , who worked in many European countries and created numerous portraits. This allocation was questioned as early as 1910. As early as 1897, Theodor von Frimmel had pointed out the possibility that the Aachen picture could be identical to one that was once in Besançon , but this assumption was not heard.
An old inventory of the Palais de Granvelle in Besançon from 1607 lists a portrait of a bearded woman and ascribes it to Guillaume Chayez, who can be equated with Willem Key. Key was a contemporary of Mor and like him painted numerous portraits. There are great stylistic similarities between the works of Mor and Key. In addition, Key had a nephew, Adriaen Thomasz Key , who was also a portrait painter and whose works in turn are very similar to those of his uncle. In 1931 L. Dimier suggested that the picture attributed to Mor in Aachen could be identical to the picture by Keys, which was once located in Besançon. This assumption seems to have been refuted today, but not the attribution of the Aachen picture to the painter Key.
Other versions
A version of the portrait is in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich . It has inventory number 1126 and is 31.6 × 24.1 cm in size. This picture came to Munich in 1799; It came from the collection of Elector Karl Theodor von der Pfalz and had previously been in his Mannheim gallery.
Another version of the portrait was auctioned in 1979 and most recently in 2008. This cannot be identical with the stolen picture from Aachen, because it had been in the hands of the owner Benjamin Sonnenberg since the 1950s and was only auctioned again in New York in 1979 . However, it could be identical to the painting once recorded in Besançon. Sotheby’s reconstructed the following owner history for this picture: It could have belonged to Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle in Besançon in the 16th century, and later perhaps to the Chevalier François Xavier de Burtin in Brussels . There it could have been sold on July 21, 1819 as a work by Holbein . Via Van Huerne in Ghent , who sold it in 1844, and Dullaert / Vandervin it could have ended up in a private collection in England, still as an accepted work by Holbein. At an unspecified point in time, the picture was provided with stickers on the back attributing it to Antonio Moro, and passed through Colnaghi & Co. and Gustave Becker in London into the hands of Miss B. Campe-Becker, who sent it to Christie's in the Sold to Benjamin Sonnenberg in New York in the 1950s. It remained there, now attributed to Willem Key, until it was auctioned in 1979, when it passed into the hands of Dr. Samuel Schaefler arrived in New York. In 2008 the picture was auctioned again.
Since 1808 this version of the portrait has had a sticker on the back, which mentions the name of the person portrayed and their origin in Basel. Margret Halseber was also known as "the woman with two beards". In the sales catalogs of 1819 and 1844, the copy that was already in the Royal Pinakothek in Munich is mentioned, but not the existence of further copies.
A fourth version is said to have been in the Amalienstift in Dessau , but apart from a note from Max J. Friedländer, there is no evidence of it.
Provenance issues
The Aachen copy was donated by Barthold Suermondt in 1882 for the newly founded Suermondt Museum. It was given inventory number GK 327. It had previously belonged to the art dealer and collector Johann Heinrich Beissel , after whose death it was auctioned in 1875. In the catalog it was named as a work by Albrecht Dürer. It is unclear where Beissel got the picture: In the catalog for the exhibition Schattengalerie of the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, a provenance from the property of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle is assumed in the introduction to the corresponding section. Congruent with the change of ownership of the third version of the picture assumed by Sotheby's, the transfer into the hands of Chevalier François Xavier de Burtin is indicated, furthermore an auction at De Burtin in Brussels on July 21, 1819 and another on November 4, 1841. At that time the picture is said to have been sold to someone named Milich. In a note on this catalog section, however, this information is put into perspective and it is pointed out that it does apply to the third version of the picture, which experts have dealt with for Sotheby's, but not to the Aachen copy. The presentation in this catalog is, however, a bit confusing and it may not be clear which of the surviving portraits of the bearded woman came from Granvelle's possession.
Theft of the Aachen copy
In the early afternoon of June 6, 1972, the Aachen copy was stolen from the museum. The not particularly large-format picture was taken out of its frame and has since been lost. The supervisor in charge of the room in which the picture was hanging was distracted by a noisy visitor in another room. He went to this visitor, had a brief discussion with him and then reported the disturbance to the secretariat of the museum. When he returned to the room, he found that the portrait of Margret Halseber had meanwhile been stolen. The thief had removed the frame from the picture and put it back on the wall. The picture had been given a red family seal on the back by its former owner, Johann Heinrich Beissel, and at the time of the theft also had various stickers and notes from the Suermondt Ludwig Museum. It is not known whether these have been removed in the meantime in order to conceal the origin of the picture if it should end up in the art market.
exhibition
Under the title Schattengalerie. The lost works of the painting collection the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum organized an exhibition in 2008-2009 on the paintings from the museum's holdings that are no longer in Aachen. In the course of this exhibition, the third version of the portrait of Margret Halseber , auctioned in 1979, was also to be shown in Aachen. At 31.1 × 26.1 cm, it is slightly smaller than the lost copy in the museum and differs from it mainly in the lack of a name inscription on the background.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Peter van den Brink (Ed.): Shadow gallery. The lost works of the painting collection. Hirmer Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4305-8 , pp. 141-144
- ↑ a b c Anna Koopstra, Willem Key - Portrait of Margret Halseber on suermondt-ludwig-museum.de ( Memento of the original from December 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c d e Description of the third version by Sotheby's
- ↑ Adriaen Thomasz Key or one of his successors is published on rkd.nl ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. named as the possible author of one of the image versions.
