HEINRICH-FRIEDRICH FÜGER, signed and dated 1791

THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

Details

HEINRICH-FRIEDRICH FÜGER, signed and dated 1791

An important miniature depicting three young ladies with flowing long curly brown hair standing in a landscape, one with sky blue bandeau, orange dress and mauve waist-sash, the second one with white bandeau and matching dress with blue belt, the third one with white bandeau and black aigrette wearing a light green dress tied with a red waist-sash -- 117 mm diam., silver-gilt frame with engraved leaf-border and plain reverse.

Provenance

Formerly Rosenbaum Galleries, Berlin and Frankfurt (in 1928).

Literature

Pantheon, II, July-December 1928, ill. p. 376; Léo R. Schidlof, La miniature en Europe, Graz, 1964, II, p. 979, ill. colour plate 224, nr 437; Irene Geismeier and Bernd Burock, Miniaturen, Berlin, 1986, p. 80.

Exhibited

Chefs-d'oeuvre de la miniature et de la gouache, Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, June-August 1956, nr 169; Meisterwerke der europäischen Miniaturmalerei von 1750 bis 1850, Vienna, Albertina, March-May 1965, nr 153, ill. fig. 26.

Lot Essay

It has been suggested that the sitters represent the three Thun sisters who were considered as the most celebrated beauties of the Viennese aristocracy of their time. They were the children of Count Francis-Joseph Thun-Hohenstein-Klösterle. Elisabeth (1764-1806) married Count Andrew Kyrillovich Razumovsky in 1788, Christiane (1765-1841) became Princess Charles of Lichnovsky in the same year, and Marie-Caroline (1769-1800) married Richard Clanwilliam, later Lord Guilford of Gillhall, in 1793. The three sisters are depicted on a rectangular miniature by Füger of 1788, in the Bode-Museum, Berlin (inv. nr. M106).

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