Tina Joest

Franz von Lenbach's portrait of Tina Joest, painted around 1900, belongs to the final chapter of his enormously successful career as Munich's pre-eminent society portraitist. Lenbach had built his reputation on penetrating likenesses of Bismarck, Wagner, and countless members of the Wilhelmine establishment, and in his last years he continued to accept commissions from prosperous bourgeois sitters. Though younger painters had long overtaken his academic-tonal style, he remained socially sought-after. The Neue Pinakothek holds this work, and the portrait's classification under Romanticism reflects Lenbach's persistent adherence to the grand manner of nineteenth-century German painting.

Lenbach employs his habitual technique of glazed, tonal modelling derived in part from old-master study, building up flesh tones with careful underlayers. The background remains indistinct, directing all attention to the face and the psychological presence of the sitter.