Lot 399: Self Portrait

Gröger Friedrich Carl
Plön 1766 - Hamburg 1838
Self Portrait
Oil/canvas, 81,5 x 67 cm, lo. le. sign. a. dat. Gröger pinxit 1835, relined. - Cat.: rais.: Vignau-Wilberg 339. - 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. - By turning his body to his friend Aldenrath the artist expresses their relationship, integrating the spectator by gazing directly out of the picture. - 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.