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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I am now at the stage of life and collecting where I am looking for quite specific things. These things must either fill a gap in my collection or expand the collection in a new way, but related to what it already contains.
Items must also have the undeniable "wow" factor, the je ne sais quoi which is so hard to explain in words but so easy to see in person.
Oh, yes, one more thing: the price must be, if not a bargain, then most attractive, so that one can justify, yet again, exceeding one's (always too meager) budget.
Imperial Hapsburg portrait.
My latest acquisition, a fine portrait of Austrian emperor Joseph II by Josef Hickel, fills all these criteria, but for the price, for I admit I did exceed my budget. I am chagrined, of course, but realistic. The auction market which has been so attractive for purchasing during the great recession now over is now most healthy again. Just as I got bargain after bargain during that recession, so I must logically expect to pay more now that that once-in-a- lifetime buying opportunity has waned.
I expect you'd like to see this picture.
Go to the website of the auction house, Vienna's celebrated Dorotheum in business since 1707. You'll find it at dorotheum.com
Once there find the entry for the Alte Meister (Old Master) pictures sale, Part I, 13 April, 2011, lot 473. Be sure to click on the link that increases the size of what you see.
Here are the facts about this picture:
Josef Hickel (born Bohmisch-Leipa/Bohemia, 1736; died Vienna, 1807).
Portrait of Emperor Joseph II in a Chevaux Legers uniform, with the Order of the Golden Fleece set with brilliants; the Order of Maria Theresa and the Order of Saint Stephen. Oil on copper, oval 32 x 26 cm, framed.
About the painter and his picture.
Josef Hickel was court painter to Empress Maria Theresa, for whom he portrayed numerous high-ranking personalities. In 1769 he was appointed a member of the Florentine Academy. In Vienna, where he was likewise affiliated with the Academy, he was repeatedly commissioned to paint Emperor Joseph II and portrayed him at least five times. He left altogether more than 3,000 portraits. The present painting depends on contemporary English portraiture, a typical feature of which is the hint of a clouded sky in the background, so that the sovereign, in contract to the meticulous rendering of his appearance, is placed against the limitless expanse of space in order to augment his significance.
These are the bare facts. Now, as every serious collector knows, the real work begins.
Every collector is an historian and needs to act like one.
Understand that every picture, and every other collectible artifact for that matter, is an aperture into the past, a way of seeing and understanding days gone by while building a collection of significance.
My involvement with this lot began when I was in high school in the mid 1960s. There for the first time I became aware of Josef Hickel, but as celebrated artist father of a celebrated artist son, Karl Anton Hickel. Hickel fils' portrait of the English early 19th century statesman Charles James Fox was pictured in a book for a project about Fox's oratory. (Charles James Fox: A Man for the People, author Loren Reid, 1969) That picture was most assuredly not in the grand tradition. It showed Fox very much as his contemporaries saw him: overweight, unkempt, hat askew, undeniably the most charming and popular man of his age. This was a Fox captured by a Hickel. Hickel pere and fils thus became must-have names on my list of desirable acquisitions.
Do you have such a list of the desirable painters, silver smiths, seat furniture craftsmen etc that you would like to have? You must. These lists are invaluable as you consider new acquisitions and, for that matter, as you de-acquisition because you have outgrown various items, styles, and craftspeople.
Because this list is very important, you must start it as early as possible and constantly work to keep it up to date.
Why Joseph II? (1741-1790).
For hundreds of years the Hapsburgs, in all their various manifestations and titles, more often than not Holy Roman Emperors, guarded Europe from menacing Turks, Russians, Slavs, and more. They were an essential cog in the wheel of European civilization. Indeed, so important were the Austrian and their sprawling possessions that had they not have existed, they would have had to be invented.
Their capital was Vienna, and there one emperor after another left his signature on a metropolis fit for a monarchy sanctioned by God, Holy and Apostolic. Joseph II thus became the Vicegerent of God on earth... and he acted accordingly... not least in turning Vienna into the cultural capital of Europe. A bumptious lad with egregious ego, dripping with disdain for the less gifted, aimed for Vienna, too. His name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born 1756). He was a handful even for the emperor himself.
However, when I look at my imperial portrait, I see the man who gave Mozart his first great break: commissioning from him the first opera in the German language, the masterwork which came to be known as "The Abduction from the Seraglio." Mozart, whose genius was greater than the empire itself, was ungrateful, of course. That is the cross even emperors must bear.
By the way, I feel honor bound to set the record straight on two standing charges against Joseph II,
1) that he told Mozart that "The Abduction..." had too many notes, Mozart immediately telling His Imperial Majesty it had just the number it needed. This story is most likely apocryphal, though it is clear Joseph II never did figure out how to treat the potty-mouthed boy who wrote with the voice of God Himself.
2) Mozart was not dumped in a common pauper's grave. Joseph II, enlightened monarch, wished to cut the giant expenditures his subjects spent on unproductive funerals. He ordered all bodies be thrown in common pits to be covered with flesh-dissolving lime. And so it was with Mozart.
Now I am part of the story.
This fine picture, still in Vienna, willl shortly to go to my conservator Simon Gillespie in London. For over 20 years now, he has taken the merely excellent and with unsurpassed talent turned my pictures, all my pictures, into glorious History. Once they are here, I become part of the story... Improving, maintaining, preserving, augmenting. But make no mistake, they most assuredly own me, never the reverse. And I am proud, honored, content to have it so.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is an avid art collector and the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
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