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Identification and Creation

Object Number
2008.266
People
Thomas Brunn, Danish (Fredensborg 1742 - 1800 Copenhagen)
Previously attributed to Johann Georg Wille, German (Königsberg in Bayern, Germany 1715 - 1808 Paris, France)
Previously attributed to Pierre-Alexandre Wille, French (Paris 1748 - 1821 Paris)
Previously attributed to circle of Jacob Matthias Schmutzer, German (1733 - 1811)
Title
Head of a Young Man
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
drawing
Date
1780
Culture
Danish
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/294539

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Two distinct shades of red chalk on off-white antique laid paper
Dimensions
55.1 x 40.5 cm (21 11/16 x 15 15/16 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Annamaria Edelstein at Succi Ltd., London (as of 1987), sold; to Jeffrey E. Horvitz, Boston, sold; to Harvard Art Museum, 2008, inv. no. 2008.266

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Richard Norton Memorial Fund
Accession Year
2008
Object Number
2008.266
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Commentary
This dramatic portrait was once considered to be a work by either Johann Georg Wille or his son Pierre-Alexandre Wille, but recent research has revealed that it is a rare drawing by the Danish artist Thomas Brunn, who lived in Paris for several years and became a student at the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture. Despite Brunn’s failed efforts to become a history painter, he remained in Paris and worked as a scene painter for the French royal theater. This may explain the old-fashioned seventeenth-century ruffs seen in so many of his portraits.

The fact that this was once considered to be a drawing by one of the Willes is not surprising. The elder Wille was one of the two most important engravers in later eighteenth-century Paris and an avid collector. His home and studio became a meeting place for northern Europeans in the French capital. His students included the young Austrian painter Jakob Mathias Schmutzer (to whom the present sheet was also once attributed), who eventually became the founding director of the Imperial Art Academy in Vienna. The red chalk drawing style of both Brunn and Schmutzer also owes a great debt to the justifiably celebrated virtuoso technique of the French painter and draftsman Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who was, not surprisingly, a very close friend of the elder Wille and the teacher of the younger Wille. Indeed, thanks to the writings and correspondence of friends like the elder Wille and Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, Greuze enjoyed greater celebrity in northern Europe than he did in France, and both he and Wille either trained or influenced a number of northern artists and collectors during their stay in Paris.

Publication History

  • Suzanne Boorsch and John Marciari, Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery, exh. cat., Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT, 2006), under cat. no. 71, pp. 210-11 (as circle of Jacob-Mathias Schmutzer)

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu