Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

Three Graces garlanded with roses

Auction Closed

May 20, 03:42 PM GMT

Estimate

150,000 - 200,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Distinguished European Collection

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

Vienna 1793 - Baden 1865

Three Graces garlanded with roses

signed and dated lower right: Waldmüller / 1856

oil on panel

panel: 32 ¼ by 25 ⅝ in.; 81.2 by 65 cm.

framed: 42 by 35 ½ in.; 106.6 by 90.1 cm.

Herr von Vlastov, 1865;
Olga Storzer, Prague;
Private collection, Budapest;
Acquired in 1941 through Hermann Hoffmann by The German Reich for the planned Führermuseum, Linz (inv. no. 2001);
Transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point by Allied Forces (Inv. no. 8590) and restituted to Austria (BDA Salzburg) in 1952;
Stored at Mauerbach and restituted in 1979;
Anonymous sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, 17 November 1981, lot 185;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 7 July 2010, lot 287;
There acquired by the present collector.

B. Grimschitz, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Salzburg, 1957, p. 352, cat. no. 829.
R. Feuchtmüller, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller 1793-1865, Vienna, 1996, p. 508, no. 907, reproduced.

Similar to other artists studying at the Viennese Academy at the beginning of the 19th Century, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller looked to Old Masters found in public collections as a source of inspiration to build his technique and artistic skill. Traveling and exhibiting all over Europe throughout his career, he became a well-established painter to several royal families. While he received acclaim for his portraits and his ability to capture the emotion and naturalism of the human condition, his landscapes reveal an innate sense of beauty and observation through a heightened sense of detail, color and texture.

The present lot brings together his strengths in a most interesting and enticing manner. Waldmüller manages to create balance and harmony in equal measure. The luminous, almost translucent, quality of the three Graces harkens back to Correggio and early sixteenth century Italy. While the figures appear idealized, their context within a meticulously detailed landscape sets the scene within our natural world.