Friedrich Georg Papperitz
Dresden 1846 – Munich 1918

Portrait of a Lady
signed Georg Papperitz in the lower right

oil on canvas

72 x 53 inches (182.8 x 134.6 cm.)

PROVENANCE: Property of an Estate, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2007

Friedrich Georg Papperitz was the son of Gustav Friedrich Papperitz a landscape painter and engraver. From the age of fifteen until the artist was seventeen he studied at the Dresden Academy. In 1866 he went to Antwerp and studied with Joseph van Lerius at the Academy. In 1867 Papperitz traveled to Paris and then onto England and Italy. From 1870-71 he was in the army fighting the Franco-Prussian War. His output in the 1870’s and 80’s was mainly historical and religious works as well as female nudes. In 1888 he painted a series of twilight scenes. The artist also sculpted and wrote poetry. ¹

By the 1890’s his works became highly prized, but starting around 1900 his portraits of women, a number of which were painted in London, are the most celebrated. These portrayals are highly reminiscent of the paintings of Franz von Lembach and especially in the richness of their palette, Franz von Stuck. Munich was one of the main centers of the Jugendstil movement, and Papperitz had settled there at least by 1896. Stylistically his works are connected to the principles of Jugendstil ² although mixed with Symbolist overtones. Yet he is something of a chameleon as his paintings always reflect the country in which they were created. In Italy he executed peasant genre scenes in an academic classicist style reminiscent of Eugene von Blaas and while in Antwerp work such as The Toast (Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, May 26, 1972, lot 448) pay homage to Vermeer.

Our painting explores distinctive elements of British painting through the eyes of a Continental artist, leaving the viewer uncertain whether it is a pure portrait, or like the studies of sultry Italian beauties, an exercise in national genre. The red-headed model may well be an English woman; she is certainly presented as such. The roses in a basket by her feet as much as the blue hairband are an explicit allusion to the accoutrements of the eighteenth century female portrait as much as to the complexions of their sitters, as is the subject’s poise and decorous pose. The background, where the space of the sitter yields at once to an idyllic landscape beyond a curtain, is a further allusion to one of the most faithfully observed conventions of Georgian portraiture.

The only incongruent element of the composition is the expression of the sitter. The ironic smile, which gives the impression of the model momentarily caught out of pose and period, serves to turn the painting’s intent on its head creating instead a joyful performance of pictorial wit.

Papperitz exhibited in Berlin in 1886, the Royal Academy, London in 1886 and 1888, and in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris where he was awarded an honorable mention. His works can be found in museums of Bautzen, Bucharest, Danzig, Munich, Sheffield, Würzburg and Zurich.

¹ Biographical information taken from Horst Ludwig “Friedrich Georg Papperitz” in Münchner Maler im 19. Jahrhundert, Bruckmann, München, 1982, p. 263.
² Ibid., pp. 263-264.

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