Lot 400: Portrait of Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath

Gröger Friedrich Carl
Plön 1766 - Hamburg 1838
Portrait of Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath
Oil/canvas, 81,5 x 67 cm, lo. ri. sign. a. dat. Gröger pinxit 1835, relined. - Cat. rais.: Vignau-Wilberg 340. - Prov.: From a Stockholm private collection. The grandmother of the grandfather of the consigner was a née Gröger. Together with her husband H. Meeths she emigrated to Stockholm; thence by descent. - Aldenrath shared a studio and later a home with Gröger. The artist expresses their intimacy not only by depicting them both with the same hat, but also by showing Aldenrath turning his head towards Gröger. - German painter a. lithographer, the best North German portrait painter of the early 19th cent., worked in his father's tailor workshop a. learned painting as autodidact, in 1785 he moved to Lübeck where H. J. Aldenrath became his pupil, later they also shared their studio a. their home, since 1789 they studied at the Berlin academy, after travelling extensively they settled in Hamburg in 1814 a. set up a lithographer's workshop where Aldenrath reproduced G.'s famous portrait paintings. - Mus.: Hamburg (Kunsthalle), Dresden, Berlin, Kiel, Lübeck u.a. - Lit.: Thieme-Becker, Rump, Der Neue Rump.