St Cecilia at the Organ, flanked by Angels Making Music.

Johann Gottfried von Schadow

1764 - Berlin - 1850

Pen in black ink, partly washed over red chalk and pencil. Heightened in gold, on greyish-brown paper.
25.3 x 32.9 cm.

Mounted on a support of the period, there old inscription: Schadow.

Provenance: Collection Wilhelm Soldan, Berlin until 1998

A beautiful sculpture drawing, intended as a model for a relief, which, according to Mackowsky, appears not to have been executed. (See Hans Mackowsky, Die Bildwerke Gottfried Schadows, Berlin 1951). For comparable designs of realised and unrealised reliefs see among other Mercur and Argus (Exh. cat. Berlin Museum,… und abends im Verein….Johann Gottfried Schadow und der Berliner Künstlerverein, 1814-1840, Berlin 1983, p. 239, cat. no. 234, ill. p. 240) and the designs for funerary monuments (Exh. cat., Johann Gottfried Schadow und die Kunst seiner Zeit, Berlin 1995, p. 119, cat. no. 67, Monument to Prince Louis; p. 239, cat. no. 84; Monument to Count Alexander von der Mark; p. 239, cat. no. 85; and the design Apotheosis of Queen Luise , p. 281, cat. no. 174).

Schadow was not only the most important German neoclassical sculptor, but also an excellent printmaker and draughtsman, whose complete graphic oeuvre remains to be studied and published. It ranges from precise pen and ink sketches, in some of which he only showed the modelling and omitted the contours – an idea developed and mainly practised by the French engraver Claude Mellan – to very complex works, in which he employed several drawing techniques.

“ The works of old Schadow stand out among German draughtsmanship of the nineteenth century. There is no connection between them and the fervent drawings of the Romantics, who admired, and attempted to capture, the wonderful in nature. But even within the draughtsmanship practised in Berlin, which followed a tradition separate from other nineteenth-century schools, Schadow remained an outsider.”(Helmut Börsch-Supan, Schreibfeder-Zeichenfeder, exh. cat., Berlin Museum;… und abends im Verein….Johann Gottfried Schadow und der Berliner Künstlerverein, 1814-1840, Berlin 1983, p. 88).

Bought by a museum, Northern America.