George Richmond, R.A.

Portrait of Theodor Matthias von Holst (1810-1844)

Lot Closed

July 8, 01:47 PM GMT

Estimate

1,000 - 1,500 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Property from the Collection of the late Cyril and Shirley Fry

George Richmond, R.A.

Brompton 1809 - 1896 London

Portrait of Theodor Matthias von Holst (1810-1844)

Pen and ink over pencil;

signed with the artist's initials in pencil lower right: GR, inscribed and dated lower centre, in pen and ink: Decr 29 1827 in pencil, GR

224 by 175 mm

The sitter was born in London in 1810, the son of a music teacher, Matthias von Holst of Riga and his Russian wife, Katharina. Showing early talent as a draughtsman, circa 1820, he was permitted to enrol in the Royal Academy schools, where he soon became a favourite pupil of Henry Fuseli. By 1827 he was exhibiting at academy exhibitions and, like his mentor, he was inspired by the unusual, the macabre and the dramatic.

Seen as an important link between the early English Romantic painters and the pre-Raphaelite generation, Dante Gabriel Rossetti said that Holst ‘may be best described… as being in some sort, the Edgar Poe of painting’.¹

See also the following lot, for an example of Von Holst's work.

1. G. Schiff, ‘Theodore Matthias von Holst,’ The Burlington Magazine, London 1963, vol. 105, p. 32