?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
ANTON RAPHAEL MENGS Selbstbildnis.
Black chalk on tan wove paper, circa 1750. 200x190 mm; 7 7/8x7 1/2 inches. Signed in chalk, lower left recto.
Provenance: Elizabeth Hamilton-Jeffrey Wortman, Inc., New York; sold to private collection, New York, October 1989.
Mengs (1728-1779) was born in Bohemia, present-day Czech Republic, to a family of artists. His father, who trained him, was a court painter in Dresden. In 1740, Mengs moved with his father to Rome, where the young artist learned to emulate Raphael and Correggio and established himself as a precocious talent. Mengs moved back to Dresden in 1744 to build his career before settling in Rome in 1752, where he stayed for the rest of his life. With art historian and Hellenist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Mengs helped to revive interest in classical antiquity. Mengs heralded Neoclassicism, the style championed by artists into the early 19th century and beyond. This pared down, simplistic style rooted in symmetry, was also practiced by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).
