Adolph von Menzel

Sale, Cologne, Kunsthaus Lempertz, 20 November 2004, lot 1600;

Ponto collection (according to an inscription on the old frame);

sale, Berlin, Villa Grisebach, 28 May 2014, lot 231;

William Louis-Dreyfus, Mount Kisco, New York (acquired from the above in 2014),

The Louis-Dreyfus Family Collections (by descent from the above in 2016)

Hamburg, Le Claire Kunst, in collaboration with Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, London, ‘A World caught with the eye and held by the pencil’: Drawings by Adolph Menzel , 2019, no. 18

Throughout his career, Menzel produced a number of charming and incisive portrait drawings of young children. The present sheet, which has been dated by scholars to circa 1875-1880, depicts an as yet unidentified fourteen-year-old girl. The drawing may perhaps be a portrait of the artist's young niece, Margarete (known as Gretel) Krigar, who was born in 1860, or else the daughter of one of Menzel's friends. Whoever the sitter is, this small but superbly drawn portrait highlights the artist's undeniable skill as a draughtsman, particularly evident in the delicate use of the stumped carpenter's pencil to achieve the subtle tonal gradations of the girl's skin and hair, as well as the more freely drawn bow on the front of her dress.