Lot 2173 Dα

What does a young artist hope for, what does he dream of from his first participation in a major exhibition? That the critics will notice him in the mass of exhibits and mention him in their reviews; that the established artists will treat him with good will, even with recognition; that his student friends and relatives will attest that he has now made his breakthrough - all these hopes were fulfilled by this work, Wilhelm Leibl's painting A Critic, when it was exhibited at the I. International Art Exhibition at the Royal Glass Palace in Munich in 1869.
The importance of this debut for the 24-year-old artist, still a master student of Piloty at the Munich Academy, cannot be overestimated. Leibl submitted five works to the exhibition of almost 2400 (!) works. In the exhibition catalogue, the painting is listed under number 962, succinctly described as a genre painting; together with the Portrait of Mina Gideon, it attracted the most admiration among Leibl's works. Thus, the artist was able to announce to his brother, not without pride, in a letter shortly after the opening: "Many claim that my genre painting [A Critic] is the best among the Munich paintings and likewise my portrait" (Röhrl 1996, op. cit., p. 52). In Düsseldorf, where the painting had been shown before, the response was equally enthusiastic. The artists there, Leibl later reported, carried him triumphantly on their shoulders, Wilhelm von Kaulbach proclaimed him "King of Painters" - "that was embarrassing for me" Leibl was later to record, but he must have enjoyed the recognition by his fellow artists.
The picture shows a critic and an artist looking at a work on paper together. The critic holds the sheet in front of him with a theatrical gesture and looks at it with admiration. The artist is sitting next to it on a table covered by a rug, leaning towards the sheet and at the same time reaching for another work behind him (it should be mentioned that the painting has been titled The Critics in the past; cf. Cologne/Munich 1994, op. cit., p. 20). Leibl's friends and fellow artists, Rudolf Hirth du Frênes and Karl Haider, served as models for the figures. An oil sketch and a pen and ink drawing from the year the painting was made enable us to trace the genesis of the work: The oil sketch (Belvedere, Vienna; fig. 1) already shows the essential elements of the figure composition. Leibl places the figures in the room with a sure hand and distributes the colour and chiaroscuro values on the surface. An essential difference between the sketch and the executed painting becomes obvious upon comparison: the scenery has been moved from the studio to a salon, the numerous artefacts of an artist's studio - curtained easel, frames, brushes, unfinished canvases - have been replaced by an almost monochrome interior, resulting in a stronger focus on the two protagonists. In the sketch as well as in the finished painting, the young Leibl's painterly brilliance is already apparent, which was noticed by colleagues and critics alike.
The description of the work as a genre painting, used by the young Leibl himself (and still sometimes used today), does not do justice to the significance of this first masterpiece. It reveals the problems of art theory and art criticism in Germany at the time in correctly classifying the realism of Leibl's art. The painting is not merely a genre scene, it reflects Leibl's own situation as a young artist preparing to step before the international art public and expose his work to the criticism of colleagues, critics and collectors - a fitting pictorial theme for a debut work, it seems. That Leibl was preoccupied with the conditions of his art-making is shown by the painting In the Studio (Liberec, Oblastní Galerie; fig. 2), probably created in the same year, which seems to be a thematic counterpart to A Critic. The fact that A Critic was Leibl's first composition with more than one figure makes the painterly mastery of this painting all the more astonishing.
Leibl's participation in the Munich exhibition of 1869 was also significant because it earned him the friendship - and admiration - of Gustave Courbet, a fateful encounter for Leibl. Courbet was represented at the exhibition alongside a number of other French artists and showed in Munich, among other things, his major work The Stone Breakers of 1849 (fig. 3). One of Courbet's visits to the city brought the two together during an evening visit to an inn. Courbet, the leading figure of Realism in France, invited Leibl to Paris, where he was to exhibit the Portrait of Mina Gideon a year later, for which he was awarded the gold medal. Leibl did not take A Critic with him to Paris, perhaps because it was already in a private collection in the Rhineland; he had been able to sell it the year it was painted. The descendants of the first owner knew of the outstanding importance of this work in Leibl's oeuvre, as a handwritten label on the back makes clear, and it was passed on from generation to generation within the family. It so happens that A Critic is being offered on the art market for the very first time, a little more than 150 years after it was created – in another astonishing debut.
Abb. 3/Ill. 3: Gustave Courbet, Die Steinklopfer / The Stone Breakers, 1849, ehemals/formerly Dresden,



Abb. 1/Ill. 1: Wilhelm Leibl, Ein Kunstkritiker / An Art Critic, 1868 © Belvedere, Wien/Vienna

Abb. 2/Ill 2: Wilhelm Leibl, Im Antelier / In the Studio, 1868/69 © Oblastní galerie Liberec

Abb. 3/Ill. 3: Gustave Courbet, Die Steinklopfer / The Stone Breakers, 1849, ehemals/formerly Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen © bpk | Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Kriegsverlust/war loss)