Lot 2111 Dα

Friedrich II (1720-1785) was the son of Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel and succeeded his father in 1760. He had already married the daughter of the English King George II 20 years prior to this, in the course of which he was accepted as a member of the “Order of the Garter”. Friedrich secretly converted to Catholicism in 1749, and the discovery of which several years later led to his separation from his wife and children. Friedrich II is considered the first enlightened ruler in Hesse and, with the opening of the Fredericianum in 1779, he also went down in history as the founder of the first museum on the European continent to be freely open to the public.
This portrait depicts the Landgrave against a schematic architectural backdrop, wearing the emblems of the British Order of the Garter, the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle and the blue ribbon of the Hessian order “Pour la vertu militaire” which he himself had founded in 1769. Several versions of this portrait of the Hessian Landgrave by Johann Heinrich Tischbein exist, some of which are knee-length or half-length and some of which have variations in the clothing or backgrounds.
Particularly noteworthy is the beautiful period frame from Kassel with crowns in the four corners in which this painting is housed. As Erich Herzog, the former director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel, mentions in his expertise, such frames are also found in the Kassel Gemäldegalerie.