Beethoven’s portraiture, the timeless model

How many followers or disciples are aware of the magnitude of Beethoven's iconography? We all know him as the immortal Romantic that sailed over the world of classical music. There was never one like him and never will there be one to knock him off the pedestal. As much as he was the most sought after composer, he was also perused as a model to represent and symbolise music and good looks a composer ever possessed. That is what all painters of his era and thereafter felt about this genius. They clamoured to paint him even before he was hailed as a child prodigy.

Beethoven's early portrait survives as something of a happy accident. The oil painting showing the composer at the age of 13, was rediscovered only in 1952. It was restored at the Histrosches Museum of the City of Vienna. This anonymous painting was purchased by a German doctor at an auction in Brunswick. It is a half-length in size 17 x 22 cm and inscribed at the back of the canvas, L.H. Beethoven as a 13-year-old. It is believed to be a gift of Beethoven to Baron von Smeskal. There is little doubt that the painting dates from the late 18th century. However, examinations have revealed that another inscription at the back of the canvas says, L. Van Beethoven. All that is known is that the painting had been in the possession of Dr. Klamman-Parlo, an art dealer from Silesia who died in 1966.


Beethoven at 13 an anonymous painting rediscovered in 1972.	My favourite portrait of Beethoven. Painted in 1806 in oil by Isidor Neugass. It is signed and dated by the artist and was owned by Prince Lichnowsky in Grattz Castle. However, it later changed hands and is in the possession of Lichnowsky descendents in South America.

It was another portrait chronologically arranged to the composer's rapidly growing fame in Vienna at the turn of the century. Beethoven was an interesting subject to painters at this relatively early is clear from a passage of letters to Gerhardi undated and evidently written in the 1790s.

Miniature

The best portrait of the composer is the beautiful miniature signed and dated 1803 by Christian Hornnman, the Danish artist who worked in Berlin and came over to Vienna in 1798 with a letter of recommendation to the famous portraitist, Johanna Heinrich Fuger. Hornman's accuracy represented Beethoven's facial features, down to the pock-marks, except perhaps the nose. There is no doubt that Horneman's miniature is the most important Beethoven portrait before the life-mask of 1812.

The dapper composer of this period is not a figment of the artist's flattering imagination, rather a corroborative evidence from no less a figure than the Australian playwright Franz Grillparse. He had met Beethoven around 1805 and later described him as the most elegantly dressed man he had ever met. He was slightly idealised but nonetheless it was an interesting portrait of the composer.

A life size painting by Joseph Williboard Mahler, a fellow countryman of Beethoven from the Rhineland although an amateur, gained much popularity after he did the composer's portrait. It is believed that Beethoven actually sat for the painting and was so taken up with the results that it remained in his possession until he died. About ten years ago, it was cleaned and expertly restored by the Historische Museum of the City of Venice to which it now belongs. A careful comparison with the 1812 life-mask reveals the the general features for the most part accurate, though idealised. An undated note from Beethoven to Mahler refers to this portrait beyond his expectation and those who saw it. The great Beethoven scholar, A.W. Thayer spoke with Mahler who died in 1860, about this portrait as if in a moment of musical enthusiasm that showed the composer represented at nearly full length. The spectacular success of Beethoven's Battle at Victoria and the charity concerts of 1814 were no doubt responsible for a new engraving of the date. Luckily, A.W. Thayer found Blasius Hefel the engraver of the new print, still alive in 1860 and was able to learn from him the facts surrounding the new portrait. Artaria, still one of Beethoven's principal publishers, had engaged the fashionable French artist Louise Letronne to make a drawing of Beethoven as the basis for the new engraving. Then a young man, Blasius Hofel, at the beginning of his career, found the drawing unsatisfactory and requested Beethoven to sit again and the composer agreed. Hofel refashioned the drawing. Contemporaries agree that it was an excellent portrait.

Beethoven's fame at that time of the Congress of Vienna provided the occasion for several other portraits. One was second attempt to paint, by Mahler. The portrait exists in three versions.

Expression

The best thing about yet another portrait supposedly executed in 1815 by Johanne Christoph Heckle is as opposed to Maheler's where the expression is shown. It reveals the same stubborn, rebellious and square-jawed Beethoven the world knows to be truthful from Klein mask and which has been rendered famous through the Waldmuller painting of 1823.

The Heckel portrait for which Beethoven sat at Stretcher's piano room was in private possession for many years and was last owned by the Lehman family. They gave it to the Library of Congress. Heckel's conception of the lower part of Beethoven's face is not entirely accurate.

He spanned one of the most turbulent and decisive periods in European history and his music formed the bridge between classicism and Romanticism. Being a restless, single-minded and over-sensitive man Beethoven was venerated even by his contemporaries as a genius, too large for life.

None could match him even from a striking distance. Number of unpublished paintings and sketches of the composer lay in many repertories while his music zoomed through centuries. Beethoven's personality and appearance along with his piano-playing, conducting and musical ideas have seized the imagination of the world.