Beethoven

Unknown

Mähler, Willibrord Joseph (1778-1860) (after a work of)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

ca. 1808

Height:

144.8 cm  (57 in.)

Width:

116.8 cm  (46 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Additional titles

Description

Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven by an unknown artist, today known as the "Thayer's copy" after its owner Alexander Wheelock Thayer (1817-1897), the American librarian and journalist who became renowned as the author of the first scholarly biography of Ludwig van Beethoven that is still considered as a seminal work. The portrait is a copy of an untitled portrait of Beethoven from 1804-05 by Willibrord Joseph Mähler (see RIdIM record no. 4558). It presents Beethoven sitting with a lyre-guitar in his left hand. The background is highly stylized, combining Romantic features (such as the cliffs with trees and the dark storm clouds) and Classicist attributes (such as the circular Greek temple).

People as subjects

Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827) (Composer portrait)

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Lyre guitar [3247]

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1
image link 2
image link 4

Bibliographic references

Bellofatto, Luigi, and Owen Jander. "A recently discovered portrait of Alexander Wheelock Thayer, painted by Margarete Auguste Fritze; Suppliment: Thayer's copy of the Mähler portrait of Beethoven, ca. 1804", Beethoven journal 21/2 (Winter 2006) 13-15. RILM 2006-9573.

Jander, Owen. "'Let your deafness no longer be a secret-even in art': Self-portraiture and the third movement of the C-Minor Symphony", Beethoven forum 8 (2000) 25-70. RILM 2000-7764.

Kosovsky, Bob. "Happy 240th, Beethoven! And thank you, Beethoven Association!" New York Public Library (16 December 2010) http://www.nypl.org/blog/2010/12/16/happy-240th-beethoven-and-thank-you-beethoven-association

"Thayer's copy", Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thayer's_copy

RIdIM record id

4557