Rosine Fischler, Gräfin Treuberg

Rosine Fischler, Gräfin Treuberg was among Leibl's aristocratic Munich patrons, and this commissioned portrait represents his engagement with the German nobility that sought out the city's leading Realist painter despite — or because of — his rejection of academic flattery. Leibl's portraits of noble and bourgeois women differ from his rural subjects primarily in the elaborateness of the dress depicted, not in his psychological approach, which remained consistently penetrating regardless of social class. Countess Treuberg's portrait belongs to the early 1870s when Leibl was still engaged with Munich society before his retreat to the countryside.

An aristocratic female portrait presents Leibl with his most elaborate technical challenge: the elaborate dress, jewelry, and coiffure of a 19th-century noblewoman demand sustained work on surface texture — the sheen of silk, the glitter of stones, the different textures of hair and skin — alongside the psychological focus of his best portraiture.