Lot 529 Dα

This charcoal drawing is a preparatory study for a series of 12 sheets with portraits of Prussian army leaders that Menzel created in the early 1850s and which were converted into woodcuts by Eduard Kretzschmar in 1856. The series of 12 large-format woodcuts was published in 1854/56 under the title "Aus König Friedrichs Zeit. War and Peace Heroes". The portrait of Lieutenant General Hans Karl von Winterfeldt was the sixth in this series. Born in 1707, Winterfeldt was one of Frederick the Great's closest military advisors. Menzel, however, does not show him as an army commander in uniform and tricorn, but in a more private moment, namely tying a sash around his waist. While the head is slightly cut off by the edge of the sheet, the painter focuses his attention mainly on this sash, the sitter's hands and the hilt of his sword. Two further preparatory studies for this portrait are known. A very similar section of the picture was shown in a sheet offered at auction by C. G. Boerner in 1990 (Lagerliste 92, 1990, no. 27) and a more spontaneous study is in the possession of the Berlin National Gallery, in which Menzel's attention is even more clearly focused on the sash motif (inv. no. 175).