Beethoven's portraiture, the timeless model

by Gwen Herat

Part 2

Entries in the conversation books of 1820, it is found that this period became fashionable to do sketches of the now famous Beethoven on his walks. A large number of striking sketches are held in repertoire. Most of them are contemporary and of course, posthumous. A lithograph issued in Prague in 1841 by artist Martin Tejeck shows Beethoven walking from a sketch he used as a basis for the lithograph.

It contains a detailed view of Beethoven's clothing. There was a realistic one showing the composer walking in the rain with collar of his shirt turned up against the wind but this sketch has gone missing.

However, the original the watercoloured pen and ink drawing was by Johanne Nepomuk Hoechle. Yet another portrait of Beethoven by Joseph Weiner in oils shows him with a walking stick. Lost to the world is one of the best sketches made without his knowledge. It was absolutely the best known sketch of the composer.

The youthful Beethoven, a very fashionable young man of his day. A wax relief possibly by J.N. Lang.

Together with reliefs and a wax relief of Beethoven was discovered in Vienna in a small interesting collection that belongs to the Historisches Musuem of the City of Vienna.

Personality

It is interesting to recall that young artists in general were fascinated by Beethoven and attracted by his personality. Such a person was the Austrian artist and sculptor, Anton Dietrich for whom Beethoven sat in 1819-1820 when Dietrich had just turned 21. The iconic Austrian painter, Ferdinand George Waldmuller was commissioned by Breitkop and Hartel in Leipzig to do a portrait of the disgruntled Beethoven in 1823 when he was particularly irritable.

As much as he tried to cheer up the composer at his sitting, the infavourable circumstances under which the portrait was painted came into criticism and denunciation of the Waldmuller painting by Schindler who said: ‘In a word, the Waldmuiller portrait is, if possible, further from the truth than any other. It is the likeness of a venerable pastor whose thoughts are occupied with elaborating a homily for the edification of his congregation. Even in its outline, it has nothing in common with the head of Beethoven, the composer in whose mind was evolving at that time the Ninth Symphony.

Symphony

Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 the last of Beethoven symphonies was composed in 1824. Composed with the idea of setting Schiller's Ode to Joy has taken Beethoven almost a quarter century to see its end. He commenced on it as early as 1817 and considered incorporating it into a symphony. It is a monumental achievement, encompassing and heightening all the familiar Beethoven feelings of exhilaration, spirituality and deep humanity. If the Pastoral Symphony is a celebration of the human spirit of nature, the ‘Choral’ is a celebration of human spirit. In this famous choral finale, Beethoven used only about one-third of Schillier's ode, arranging the stanzas in his own order.

He writes for the human voice as though it were an orchestral instrument and much of it is scored ungratefully high, making the words difficult to distinguish. Yet it does not matter as the texture and emotional power of the whole score drives Beethoven's purpose into our consciousness.

However, artist, Theodor von Frimmnel says of the portrait of Waldmuller that by far the greatest artist ever to paint Beethoven and his work cannot be dismissed so lightly.

A few days after the performance of the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven is painted by the well-known portraitist, Joseph Teltscher who is a member of the Schubert circle, made three drawings of the composer on his death bed. Theodore Frimmel discovered these fascinating drawings in the famous collection of Dr. Augustus Haymenn in Vienna. They were published for the first time in May 1909 and later were taken into the collection of Stefan Zweig and now are owned by Zweig's heir, Eva Alberman.

Private sketches

Quite unlike the pathetic and terribly private sketches by Teltscher, is the sketch of Beethoven in death made on March 28, 1827 which was the day after his death by yet another young artist making a pilgrimage to the great composer, was tragic in a curiously impersonal and objective way. He was Joseph Danhauser born in 1805 and also made the famous death-mask.

It was hitherto believed to show the composer horribly disfigured by the autopsy which had been made before Danhauser could begin his work. Beethoven's organs of hearing were removed for study to facilitate this the temporal bones had to be sawed out causing the facial muscles to sag. Gluck concluded; ‘On the basis of the death-mask, we would know him, this great man, even if we did not whom it represents.’ The outstanding details regarding Beethoven's life in his native city are not known. The long period of peace on the soil of Germany lasted until the beginning of the 1790s. Musicians were bound to their duties to the courts by which the fostering of music always took pride of place.

The concern with earning a livelihood and the urge towards further training and the solitude of that his budding genius required, the absence of all publicity and other well-known methods of the glorious which transforms schoolboys into finished artists in these and other internal and external factors that must seek the reasons by the youth of the composer, who was one day to give his name to the era of in German art, was lacking in significant art-historic incidents. So empty was it of miraculous and romantic anecdotes that the young Beethoven cannot be compared with the other youthful prodigies who at the same age astonished the world with operas and symphonies.

The young piano player, organist and composer who had another reason for this paucity may lie in the fact that he endeavoured from his childhood to be a man in the true meaning of the word and achieve the most fundamental human principles, in complete antithesis of the musical demi-gods of the day.

He made this clear in a passage from a letter to Wegeler in June 1800 which read: ‘This much I can tell you that when you see me again I will be really great not only as an artist but as a man. You will find me better, fully developed and if the prosperity of our fatherland has somewhat improved, then shall my art be directed towards the benefits of the poor. I shall be happy to contribute to this end and can bring this to pass.