Portrait of a Woman (Frau Gregas?)

Painted in 1877 and held at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, this portrait of a woman (possibly Frau Gregas) by Franz von Lenbach is characteristic of the Munich portraitist's enormously successful practice. Lenbach was the most celebrated German portrait painter of the later nineteenth century, whose clients included Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, Pope Leo XIII, and the leading figures of German and European cultural life. His technique—applying old-master glazing methods to photographs used as compositional guides—produced portraits of great tonal richness and apparent psychological depth that contemporary audiences found compelling.

Lenbach's characteristic technique gives this portrait its distinctive warm, glowing quality: thin glazes of warm brown and amber over a careful underdrawing create the atmospheric depth associated with Rembrandt, which Lenbach consciously cultivated. The woman's face emerges from a dark, enveloping background through careful tonal graduation, the details of costume subordinated to the psychological presence of the face.