Lot 181 Dα

This portrait depicts the stark profile of the German landscape painter Edmund Kanoldt (1845-1904) against a neutral background. Edmund Kanoldt moved to Rome in 1869 following his artistic training under Friedrich Preller in Weimar. In Rome, he met the painter Anna Schleh from Berlin, who had been living there since 1868 (see: Clara Erskine Clement Waters: Women in the Fine Arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth, Boston and New York 1904). The present work was painted in Rome in 1872, the year that Kanoldt returned to Germany. The artist was the father of Alexander Kanoldt (1881-1939), one of the pioneers of New Objectivism in the 1920s.
Edmund Kanoldt's grandniece Martha Kanoldt gave this painting as a wedding gift to the parents of the present owner, as confirmed by a hand-written letter from Martha Kanoldt congratulating the couple.