Lot 117 | Barbara Rosina von Lisiewska | Portrait of Crown Prince Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick (1735 - 1806)

LISIEWSKA, BARBARA ROSINA VON
('widowed Matthieu; married de Gasc')
1713 Berlin - 1783 Dresden

Title: Portrait of Crown Prince Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick (1735 - 1806).
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Mounting: Relined.
Measurement: 53 x 41cm.
Frame: Framed.

Certificate:
Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, 27.01.2001, copy available.

Literature:
Exhib. cat.: Das preussische Offizierkorps 1701 - 1806. Uniformierung - Bewaffnung - Ausrüstung. Ed.: Rolf Wirtgen. Koblenz 2004, pp. 110-111.

Exhibitions:
Das preussische Offizierkorps 1701 - 1806. Sonderausstellung der Wehrtechnischen Studiensammlung, Koblenz, Wehrtechnisches Museum Koblenz, 2004.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

The German-Polish portraitist Barbara Rosina de Gasc, who was erroneously referred to as Anna Rosina, was the daughter of the well-known painter Georg von Lisiewka, who also instructed her. As early as 1734 she received her first call to Dresden, which she turned down in favour of sharing a studio with her father. In 1755, after the death of her first husband, the court painter David Matthieu, she finally went to Zerbst and produced her cycle of the so-called Schönheitsgalerie, in which she portrayed forty ladies of the Prussian court. Marrying Ludwig de Gasc - a friend of Lessing - the couple moved to Brunswick in 1764, where she was appointed court painter on 11 August 1777. Her outstanding qualities led to her being made an honorary member of the Dresden Academy in 1765.

In the present portrait she depicts Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick, who was born in 1735 as the son of Duke Karl I of Brunswick and his wife Philippine Charlotte - a daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia. Appointed general in 1773, he took over the government seven years later and led the Prussian-Saxon troops against Napoleon during the Revolution.
Barbara Rosina de Gasc shows him in a representative three-quarter length portrait, befitting his rank, his self-confident gaze meeting the viewers eyes. The artist underlines the military and political successes of the Crown Prince through fine details as well as in gestures and facial expressions. The rolled-up map in his right hand, for example, together with the sweeping arm movement pointing into the distance, indicates his political ambitions. Her work is characterised by a fine and detailed style of painting, which gains psychological depth through the realistic conception.
In his certificate of 26.01.2001, Helmut Börsch-Supan confirms the court painter's authorship and moreover confirms the sitter as the said Crown Prince.