Portr. of a little girl

Portrait of a Little Girl by Franz von Lenbach, dated 1901 and held at the Munich Central Collecting Point, belongs to a category of portraiture in which his softened tonal technique found particular sympathy. Lenbach painted children with a tenderness that distinguished these works from the severity of his Bismarck portraits and the social weight of his formal commissions. The child's face — with its different proportions and different qualities of attention — invited a lighter, more indulgent touch while still demanding the psychological fidelity that was his consistent ambition.

Lenbach adjusts his technique for the child sitter — softer modelling, lighter overall tone, a more yielding treatment of the face that captures childhood's quality of open, unguarded presence. The glazed layers are applied with particular delicacy, the warm ground showing through to give the child's skin its characteristic luminosity.