Portrait of Pauline Huebner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Portrait of Pauline Huebner (Julius Huebner)
Portrait of Pauline Huebner
Julius Huebner , 1829
Oil on canvas
189.5 x 130 cm
Old National Gallery , Berlin

The portrait of Pauline Hübner is a painting by Julius Hübner . The portrait shows his 19-year-old wife Pauline Charlotte, née Bendemann, shortly after their wedding in 1829 and is one of the important portraits of women at the Düsseldorf School .

Pauline Huebner

Pauline Hübner with her daughter Emma and her parents in the center of the painting Der Schadow-Kreis (The Bendemann family and their friends) , joint work by Eduard Bendemann (second top left), Theodor Hildebrandt (third top left), Julius Hübner (bottom right) , Wilhelm Schadow (top right) and Karl Ferdinand Sohn (first top left), started in Rome in 1830 and finished in Düsseldorf in 1831

Pauline Hübner, born on September 28, 1809 in Berlin as Pauline Charlotte Bendemann , died on March 8, 1895 in Dresden , was the daughter of the Berlin banker Anton Heinrich Bendemann (1775–1866, until 1809 Aron Hirsch Bendix ) and his wife Fanny Eleonore , born von Halle (1778–1857). Her uncle was the Berlin engraver Benedict Heinrich Bendix . Soon after Pauline's birth, on May 5, 1811, in connection with Jewish emancipation and assimilation and shortly before the Jewish edict of 1812 , the parents, who belonged to the upper middle class of Berlin, converted from Judaism to Protestantism . Pauline was baptized as a Protestant on January 26, 1812 , together with her younger brother, the later painter Eduard Bendemann . In the artistic environment she met the painter Julius Hübner know, a student of the Berlin Academy of Art , the 1826/1827 as her brother and other students with the teacher Wilhelm Schadow at the Dusseldorf Art Academy was changed. They married on May 21, 1829. Their honeymoon, on which they were temporarily accompanied by Pauline's parents, took them to Rome in autumn 1829 , where the couple traveled again in 1830. Until the summer of 1831 they and their parents maintained a hospitable house in Via del Babuino near Piazza del Popolo , the Casa Bendemann-Hübner , which was visited by a number of artists, especially many " German Romans ". In 1830 their daughter Emma († 1844) was born. In 1831 their son Paul († 1833) was born. In Düsseldorf , where the family lived from 1833 and Julius Hübner perfected himself in the master class of the art academy, the son Emil († 1901) was born in 1834 , the daughter Fanny († 1875) and in 1837 the son Hans († 1884). When Julius Hübner received a call from the Dresden Art Academy in 1839 , the family moved to the Saxon capital in September of that year. In 1840 Pauline gave birth to their son Franz († 1898), in 1842 to their son Eduard († 1924) and in 1846 to their son Martin († 1908). In 1871 Julius Huebner climbed the peak of his professional career when he was appointed director of the Royal Picture Gallery . The family's circle of friends included many artists, in addition to the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy couple, the Robert Schumann couple . The pianist and composer Clara Schumann dedicated her last composition to the Huebner couple for their golden wedding anniversary, the March in E flat major for piano four hands .

Description and meaning

The painting shows the artist's wife as a life-size full figure on a stool-like chair with wooden side rests that are decorated with carved bird heads, two of which are visible. The person pictured , whose body, with the exception of the tilted head, is shown in three-quarter profile as a seated image , looks at the viewer - at the time the picture was created, her husband - in a slightly bent position with an intense personal, probably erotic look from dark eyes head-on. Her deep black, long, decollete morning robe, which seems to merge over the shoulder with the long, wavy hair of the sitter, is finished with a noble fur hem. A small black slipper peeks out from under the fur hem on a bottle-green foot cushion. Golden silk oozes out of the wide, rolled-up sleeves of the robe as a lining.

The person portrayed holds in her hands an open box with jewelry and precious stones, a minne box , which symbolically refers to the previous wedding as a morning gift. A precious "shell vase" on a side table indicates the physically consummated marriage . From the opening of the “shell”, actually the shell of an exotic sea snail, which shows the shape of a vulva , a red lily , a Jacob's lily , sprouts as a filigree symbol of femininity, love and vanitas .

The entire scene, which is enriched in a mannerist manner by a lap dog at the feet of the portrayed , is set in the noble interior design of an elegant house. A luxurious, luxuriant draped Portiere made of red substance, the baroque to the tradition ruler images refers and the portrait gives a stage-like spatial impression created by the green color of the wall a coloristic complementary effect , which finds a match in color match of the oriental carpet pattern. The classicistically structured wall is adorned by a pilaster with an ornamentally decorated vertical strip , in the middle of which a coat of arms bears the inscription in Latin: Carissimam conjugem / aet: 19 ann. / depinxit Jul. Hübner / amoris sui monumentum / 1829 / JH - the dearest wife / at the age of 19 / painted by Jul. Hübner / as a memorial to his love / 1829 / JH . This dedication expresses that the painter the picture as a testimony of love created to his wife. Their youthfulness and seemingly casual posture stand in peculiar contrast to the stylization that the painter developed in the academic portrait tradition.

The play with color contrasts, the glorifying depiction of a seated lady as a "splendid woman", the use of shell symbolism and the use of attributes such as lap dog, foot cushions, drapery and fine fabrics in the magnificent, architecturally designed interior show parallels to the double portrait of Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz and his wife Anna Maria Luisa de 'Medici .

Creation, provenance and exhibition history

Under the title Pauline's image in the parents made Julius Hübner in 1828 as a design sketch a drawing in lead and water colors in the format 27.2 x 20.6 cm, contained the already essential elements of the main plant. He created the main work in oil until 1829 and completed it after he had married Pauline Bendemann on May 21st. It was shown publicly at the Berlin Academy Exhibition in 1830 under the title Portrait of a Young Woman, Life Size . After this exhibition, the picture came into the possession of Pauline's father. In 1906 it was presented again in Berlin as part of the exhibition of the century of German art, and again in 1920 in the portrait exhibition of the Berlin Academy. From the Hübner family property ( Heinrich Hübner , 1869–1945) it was purchased in 1923 by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for the Alte Nationalgalerie , which exhibited it from December 1925 to January 1926 in a solo exhibition of Julius Hübner's oeuvre. The portrait was shown for the first time in Dresden in 1928 under the title Art in Saxony . In 1947 it presented the exhibition German painting in Wiesbaden , in 1979 the exhibition Düsseldorfer Malerschule in Düsseldorf and Darmstadt .

literature

  • Birgid Monschau-Schmittmann: Julius Hübner (1806-1882). Life and work of a late Romantic painter . Dissertation, Bonn studies on art history, Volume 7, Hamburg / Münster 1993.
  • Wolfgang Hütt : The Düsseldorf School of Painting. 1819-1869 . VEB EA Seemann Buch- und Kunstverlag, Leipzig 1984, p. 56 f.
  • Wend von Kalnein : The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 347 f.
  • Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Ed.): Directory of paintings and sculptures of the 19th century. Collection catalog . Berlin 1976, p. 178.
  • Karl Koetschau : Rhenish painting in the Biedermeier period . Verlag des Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf 1926, p. 64.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bettina Baumgärtel : The Schadow Circle (The Bendemann family and their friends), 1830/31 . In: Bettina Baumgärtel (Hrsg.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting and its international impact 1819–1918 . Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86568-702-9 , Volume 2, p. 21 f. (Catalog No. 9)
  2. ^ Jacob Jacobson (ed.): The Jewish Citizens' Books of the City of Berlin. 1809-1851. With additions for the years 1791–1809 . Publications of the Berlin Historical Commission, Volume 4, Quellenwerke Volume 1, Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin 1962, p. 1809 ( Google Books )
  3. ^ Friedrich Noack : The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1927, Volume 2, p. 280
  4. ^ Anne-Katrin Sors: Sketchbook Italy (1831) . In: Christian Scholl, Anne-Katrin Sors (ed.): Before the paintings: Eduard Bendemann draws. Inventory catalog of the drawings and sketchbooks of a main representative of the Düsseldorf School of Painting in the Göttingen University Collection . Universitätsverlag Göttingen, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86395-083-5 , p. 220 ( Google Books )
  5. ^ Julia M. Nauhaus: Rudolf Julius Benno (1806–1882) and Pauline (1809–1895) Hübner born. Bendemann , website at schumann-portal.de , accessed on February 2, 2018
  6. ^ Norbert Suhr: Philipp Veit (1793–1877). Life and work of a Nazarene. Monograph and catalog raisonné . VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Acta Humaniora, Weinheim 1991, ISBN 3-527-17709-4 , p. 111 ( Google Books )
  7. ↑ Note: See also Still Life with Lilies, including a red Jacob's Lily, by Raffaele di Fiori , 1828.
  8. ^ Pauline Hübner (1828) , website in the portal julius-huebner.de , accessed on February 2, 2018
  9. ^ Berlin Academy Exhibition . Berlin 1830, p. 27, catalog no. 289
  10. ^ Exhibition of German art from the period 1775–1875 in the Königliche Nationalgalerie Berlin 1906 . Catalog of the paintings, Verlaganstalt F. Bruckmann, Munich 1906, p. 236 f., Catalog no.757 ( digitized version )