Lot 1105 | A Young Lady Playing the Harp

SIMM, FRANZ XAVER
1853 Vienna - 1918 Munich

Title: A Young Lady Playing the Harp.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 40,5 x 30cm.
Notation: Signed lower left: F. Simm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Verso:
On the panel adhesive label from the London artists' supply dealer Winsor&Newton.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

As an ensemble with its original and opulent frame, the portrait of a young lady at the harp seems like an open door that draws today's viewer into the Biedermeier era - even if we are actually only looking through a keyhole, as the scene is rather intimate and personal. The elegantly dressed musician, who plays the harp pensively and only for herself - the depiction of a harp as an instrument alone has rarity value in itself - lives in her own world, the only attribute appearing to be the floral still life of the white lilies, which refer to the lilies with which the Mother of God was identified with already in medieval paintings. The chair and the lavishly decorated silk wallpaper suggest her elevated social status. We can understand the harp as a symbol for the inner harmony of the young lady.
All this is emblematic of social life when the bourgeoisie created its own idyll in the interior, for which art and culture, architecture and fashion were of immediate importance.
Franz Xaver Simm, born in Vienna, studied there with Anselm Feuerbach and, after stays in Rome and Tbilisi, settled in Munich with his wife, who was also a painter. There he quickly made a name for himself with his small-format genre depictions, which were stylistically oriented towards the Empire, this variety of classicism that was influential not only for interior design. The combination of his excellent and detailed painting culture together with the splendid carved gold frame of no lesser quality harmonise and impress in this painting of A Young Lady Playing the Harp in a special way.