Portr. of Lorenz Gedon

Lorenz Gedon was a Munich architect and designer who moved in the same artistic circles as Lenbach and played a significant role in the decorative arts revival of the 1870s. Painted in 1876 and held in the Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany, this portrait records a friendship between two prominent figures in Munich's cultural establishment. Lenbach's portraits of artist and architect friends carry a different quality from his grand society commissions: more relaxed, occasionally more experimental in handling, and revealing of a genuine interest in the sitter beyond their social position. The 1870s were formative years for Munich's identity as Germany's premier art city, and figures like Gedon contributed to a self-conscious cultivation of artistic environment that Lenbach both represented and benefited from.

A portrait of a personal acquaintance might show slightly freer handling than formal commissions, with Lenbach allowing himself more painterly latitude in passages less central to likeness. The oil on canvas support enables his preferred approach of building form through successive transparent layers over an opaque but warm initial layer.