BECK, JACOB SAMUEL
Erfurt 1715 - 1778


Title: Portrait of Heinrich Rudolf Boutin (1749-1822) as "The Little Red Hussar".
Date: Ca. 1759.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 105 x 81cm.
Frame: Framed.
Verso:
On the canvas adhesive label with information on the depicted.

Literature:
Th.v. Taschitzki: Jacob Samuel Beck und sein vielseitiges Werk - Detailstudien und Spurensuche. In: exhib. cat. "Jacob Samuel Beck (1715-1778): zum 300. Geburtstag des Erfurter Malers". Angermuseum Erfurt 18th October 2015 - 17th January 2016, ill. 58.

Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany;
Private ownership, France, until 2024.

Von Taschitzki writes about this painting, which at the time was only known as a photograph: "Around 16-18 years earlier, a portrait of a child of the same Boutin son was probably created, which shows typical features of Beck's portrait painting. This portrait, which is the only known bourgeois portrait of a child by Beck so far, is only documented in a black-and-white photograph. Johannes Nikolaus Boutin, who can probably be considered the most important Beck collector among the wealthy citizens of Erfurt, commissioned the Erfurt painter to paint a portrait of his 8-10-year-old son Heinrich Rudolph, probably between 1757 and 1759. The boy was depicted in the child's costume of a "red hussar", with Beck repeating familiar patterns of his portrait painting in this portrait of a child, e. g. the cut console table, the left hand resting on the removed hussar's cap and the downward gesture of the right hand."