Lot 4087: Hoff, Johann Philipp: Portraits of Fanny Janauschek

Hoff, Johann Philipp: Portraits of Fanny Janauschek Photographer: Johann Philipp Hoff (1833 - 1908). Role portraits of the actress Fanny Janauscheck (1829 - 1904). 1859/60. 4 albumen prints mounted to carte-de-viste boards, 3 mounted to card. Each circa 10 x 6,3 cm. Unmounted carte-de-visite with photographer's name and address printed on mount verso.
The son of the Frankfurt artist and lithographer Johann Nikolaus Hoff, Johann Philipp Hoff studied sculpture (1848-1852) at Städelsche Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt. Eventually he went to Munich where he became an assistant to the lithographer and photographer Franz Hanfstaengl. In 1858 Hoff returned to Frankfurt where he opened his own photographic studio and became one of the most prominent Frankfurt photographers of the 1860s. One can see the influence of his time under Hanfstaengl in the way Hoff poses and photographs his sitters. His studio closed in 1888.
The actress Fanny Janauschek was firmly engaged at the Frankfurter Schauspielhaus between 1849 and 1860. In the late 1850s she was repeatedly celebrated as the personification of the City of Frankfurt (Frankofurtia). One of the photographs offered here shows her in costume in this role. A portrait of her (circa 1861) by the artist Arnold Böcklin is in the collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt and she also modelled for the Frankfurter Vereinsthaler coin of 1857. After a successful career in Europe as well as South- and North America, Janauscheck died in New York City in 1904.- One print with some fading in right edge, otherwise rich dark prints in very good condition.