Lot 110: Bartholomäus Ignaz Weiss , Munich circa 1740-1814 Portrait of Georges Desmarées (1697-1776) at his Easel painting a portrait of Johann Christian Thomas Winck (1738-1797) oil on metal

signed and dated lower right B.Weÿss/ Fecit/ 1772 inscribed beneath the window sill Georgius de Marées Aulae Boicae Pictor Prima:/rius.; and on the reverse Altera imago est Christiani Winkii Aulae/ Boicae Pictoris. oil on metal

measurements note 12 1/4 by 9 1/2 in.; 31.1 by 24.1 cm.

This picture is an example of "Freundschaftsbild," literally "Friendship-painting" which depicts two or more artists together, a popular motif in German art from the late 18th, and into the 19th Century.υ1 This piece, in fact, was painted by Bartholomäus Ignaz Weiss, one of the leading artists in Munich in the second half of the 18th Century, and repeats the composition of a just such a painting by Christian Winck, where he depicted Georges Desmarées, the Swedish-born first painter at the court of Munich, in the act of painting in turn a portrait of Winck himself (now Munich, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Inv. Nr. L540). Both pictures are painted on white metal (zinc?) and the present painting is dated the year after the Munich example. 1. For an exhaustive discussion of the subject, please see K. Lankheit, Das Freundschaftsbild der Romantik, Heidelberg 1952.