Lot 79: Paul Emil Jacobs , German 1802-1866 portraits of two greek freedom fighters and the ali pasha oil on paper (three works)

i.) dated Rom den 29 Dec 1839 ; ii.) dated Rom den 28 Nov 1839; iii.) dated Rom den 29 Nov 1839 and inscribed Barbecelli 3T Compagnia oil on paper (three works)

i.) 55.5 by 39.5cm.; 22 by 15½in.; ii.) 59 by 45cm., 23¼ by 17¾ in.; iii.) 50 by 41cm., 19¾ by 16¼ in.

Arnold Blome, Bremen

PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
The present portraits of Greek freedom fighters and the Ali Pasha were executed by Jacobs in Italy in 1839 following his visit to Greece and the Orient the previous year. The Greek freedom fighters depicted are two of the main characters in Jacobs' large oil painting The Shipwreck (fig. 1), an allegory of Greece's heroic struggle for independence.

Phil-hellenism - a romantic-political movement which supported the efforts of Greece against the Ottoman Empire - was prominent in France, Germany and Great Britain at the time. The Greek Salon in Paris in 1826 and the ascension of Otto of Bavaria to the Greek throne put the country's plight into the conscience of other western European countries. Artists such as Lord Byron, Delacroix, David, Géricault, Vernet, Prud'hon, Peter von Hess, Carl Rottmann and Paul Emil Jacobs tried to support the Greek cause through their works.

Paul Emil Jacobs was the son of the well known Greek Antiquities scholar Friedrich Jacobs, a close friend of the German Hellenist Friedrich Thiersch, advisor to King Otto I of Greece. Thiersch had visited Greece in the retinue of the King, and having returned to Munich full of admiration and sympathy for the Greek cause, he opened his home to welcome and look after orphans of its freedom fighters. It is likely that the most famous of these orphans, Theodoros Vryzakis, met Jacobs through the intervention of Thiersch, and that Jacobs oeuvre was influenced both by his classical upbringing and friends such as Thiersch and Vryzakis.

Jacobs's extensive travels through Greece in 1838 - partly in the company of a Greek sailor who was a veteran of the war - marked him profoundly. He subsequently moved from religious painting to more romantic subjects, in which Greece and its people became a recurring theme.

His dramatic painting The Shipwreck, to which two of the present works closely relate, is an important testifier of his sentiments: the narrative of the painting, which depicts Greeks in a boat under attack from Turks, allowed Jacobs to underline the courage and heroism of the Greeks. At the same time, the postures of his Greek protagonists also show their defiance in the face of danger, and their ultimate victory is signalled by the triumphant gesture of the central figure in the background.

FIG. 1, Paul Emil Jacobs, The Shipwreck, after 1838, oil on canvas
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