The little Perthes

The Little Perthes (1805), held at the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, depicts a child from the Perthes family — publishers and friends of Runge in Hamburg — with the same symbolic seriousness he brought to all his childhood studies. Friedrich Christoph Perthes was one of Hamburg's leading publishers and a supporter of Runge's work; this portrait of his young son was a gesture of personal affection within a significant professional relationship. Children in Runge's art are never merely cute subjects but embodiments of an uncorrupted mode of perception he associated with the divine. The Weimar holding of this work reflects the Klassik Stiftung's broad interest in German Romantic culture as a whole, situating Runge within the constellation of artists and thinkers associated with the great classical period of German intellectual life centered on Weimar and Jena.

The child's portrait demonstrates Runge's characteristic approach to young sitters: a fresh, high-key palette contrasting with the darker tones he used for adult subjects, and a particularly attentive treatment of the large, luminous eyes that he associated with the child's special visual openness. The background is light and airy, creating an atmosphere of possibility rather than the closed, weighted space of conventional adult portraiture.