Handel, George Frideric

showing the composer full-face, executed in oil on canvas, old inscription in brown ink on the back of the canvas "Klein.pinx.1734"

c.76 x 64cm, old wooden frame (overall size: 88 x 76cm), unglazed and unbacked

purchased by Georg Schumann, Director of the Singakademie in Berlin in 1908, from Hermann Held, museum director in Magdeburg and Leipzig.  Held supposed the painting to represent J.S. Bach.

The painting is in moderate overall condition. The canvas has an old crudely tacked relining. The paint surface is dirty and discoloured beneath a more recent varnish layer. Crease and loss lines on all four sides suggest that the portrait may have been folded at some point in the past. The paint surface has clearly had a history of flaking in the past, for it is pitted and uneven throughout, especially in the background. Inspection under ultra violet light reveals more than one campaign of old retouching because of this, but no major damages or repairs. Offered in an 18th Century style gilt wood frame.
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This portrait was illustrated in Berlin at the exhibition at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in 1998 (see exhibition catalogue, p.34) and in Albert Scheibler, Sämtliche 53 Bühnenwerke des Georg Friedrich Händel (1995).  It is not mentioned either in Jacob Simon's Handel. A Celebration of his Life and Times (National Portrait Gallery, 1985), or Edwin Werner's 'Georg Friedrich Händel in bildlichen Darstellungen", Händel Jahrbuch (2008).