Adolph von Menzel

Nationale-Galerie, Berlin (L.1640; inv. no. 1379), by 1905;
given in 1928 to Leo Lewin, Breslau;
Baron Gerhard von Pölnitz-Aschbach, Berlin;
by whom given to Max J. Friedländer as a gift on his 90th birthday, June 1957;
Galerie Gerda Bassenge, Berlin

Berlin, Königliche National-Galerie, Austellung von Werken Adolph von Menzels, 1905, cat. no. 1649

M. Schmidt-Aachen, 'Adolf von Menzel', in Zeitschrift für Bildende Kunst, NF 7, 1896, p.64;
L. Pelizzari, Menzel in Verona, Leipzig 2008, p.333 

Unframed. Window mounted and hinged at top. Was previously laid down around edges. A slight yellowing of the paper apart from the edges, which are paler. There are three very faint fox marks near the lower edge. Otherwise the sheet is in good condition, the chalk very strong and fresh.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This study of a young man with his head turned to his left was most surely drawn from life, at the time of Menzel's first trip to Italy in 1881. He used it later for the figure of a young man driving a carriage with two horses, probably a vendor, in the centre background of his vivacious painting of the Piazza delle Erbe, Verona, dated 1884 and now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister, Dresden.¹ The idea for the painting seems to have developed from Menzel's second trip to Italy in 1882, as different elements he used in it appear in two of his surviving sketchbooks of that date now in Berlin² and in other drawings of that period. It seems he also made studies of figures directly from an unknown Italian model in Berlin.  

This handsome drawing was given as a present to the renowned art historian Max J. Friedländer (Berlin 1867- 1958 Amsterdam), director of the Berlin Museum until 1933, for his 90th birthday, one year before his death.  Professor Friedländer, among his many achievements as an art historian, was the author of the celebrated fourteen volumes on Early Netherlandish painting.

1. See C. Keisch and M.U. Riemann-Reyher, Adolph Menzel 1815-1905, New Haven & London 1996, p. 414, no. 179, reproduced
2. Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, sketchbooks 58 and 59