Lot 82 Dα

King Frederick William II (1744-1797), is depicted here in full figure from a lowered viewpoint against a landscape background. Frederick William became King of Prussia in 1786 as successor to his uncle Frederick the Great. He was a patron of the fine arts as well as of literature and music.

The composition of this portrait is based on a pastel by the Brunswick court painter Johann Heinrich Schröder (1752-1812), of which there are three versions, among others in the Royal Collection in London and in the possession of the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg. In her catalogue raisonné of Schröder's works, Marieluise Spangenberg also refers to a copy in oil, possibly by Georg Andreas Hoffmann (cf. M. Spangenberg: Der Meininger Porträtmaler Johann Heinrich Schröder (1757-1812). Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, Meiningen 1995, no. 142). Hoffmann exhibited a work entitled "Das Portrait Sr. Königl. Majestät von Preußen, ganze Figur nach Schröder" in the Berlin Academy Exhibition of 1793 under no. 104. In his 2003 expertise, Helmut Börsch-Supan proposed that this could be the painting in question and emphasised: "The quality is remarkable. The brushwork is confident and lively [...]."
While the present portrait follows Schröder's model quite closely in terms of the figure's pose and the landscape background, a portrait published in 2011 by Rainer Michaelis and attributed to Georg Andreas Hoffmann (Rainer Michaelis: Entdeckt! Ein unbekanntes Bildnis des preußischen Königs Friedrich Wilhelm II., in: MuseumsJournal. Berichte aus den Museen, Schlössern und Sammlungen in Berlin und Potsdam 2, 2011, pp. 16-17) shows the king also with his head turned to the right, but with his posture mirrored in reverse and set against a backdrop of the Marble Palace and the Pfingstberg in Potsdam.

Georg Andreas Hoffmann, who was deaf like his two brothers who were also active as painters and engravers respectively, studied under Adam Friedrich Oeser in Leipzig and later under Giovanni Battista Casanova at the Dresden Academy. After initially working for the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, he moved to Berlin in 1788, where he became a sought-after portrait painter.