Portrait of the composer V. J. Tomášek

Machek, Antonín (1775-1844)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

after 1816

Height:

79.0 cm  (31 1/8 in.)

Width:

61.0 cm  (24 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Additional titles

Description

From the Národní galerie Praha website: Machek's contemporary and friend Václav Jan Tomášek (1774-1850) was an outstanding 19th-century composer and music teacher. He wrote many pieces of Church and secular music, even an opera. As an appreciated composer he was commissioned to write a solemn mass - Missa Solemnis in C major - for the 1836 coronation of Ferdinand V king of Bohemia. This representative portrait combines the prevailing Empire style with Classicist plastic exaggeration, its veracity raising it well above the average of contemporaneous art. Machek provided the portrait with some typical attributes: Tomášek holds the printed score of his 1813 Mass No.1, on the table in front of him stands a metronome and in the background, behind volumes of music, is a pseudo-ancient statue of a Muse with a lyre.

People as subjects

Tomášek, Václav Jan (1774-1850) (Composer portrait)

Iconclass

48C713
portrait of composer
48C738
accessories ~ music: metronome, music-stand, tuning-fork, etc.

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Lyre [3501]

Musical works

Tomášek, Václav Jan -- Mass, op. 46legible music notation

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

RIdIM record id

5639