(Berlin 1732 – after 1813)
An elegant company, some playing cards in a park landscape,
oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm, in an elaborate carved and gilded Rococo frame

We are grateful to Helmut Börsch-Supan for confirming the attribution to Rähmel. A written certificate accompanies the present painting.

This elegant work is one of the few remaining paintings of the court artist. Almost certainly the depicted scene consists of individual portraits. Rähmel was trained by David Matthieu, and the refined French elegance of his master’s works is apparent in the present painting. Having worked in Berlin and various other German courts (among them the small court of Duchess Christine of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, sister of Queen Charlotte of England). Rähmel settled in Prague, where he was commissioned by important patrons among the local nobility. He painted the Prince-Bishop Przichowsky and Prince Lobkowicz.

1775 Rähmel arrived in Vienna, where he secured important commissions from the imperial court. He remained in Vienna for more than two decades and was possibly the most ‘Prussian’ of the Viennese court painters. His portrait of Emperor Leopold II, today in the collection of the Prince of Thurn und Taxis, Regensburg, demonstrates his skill and also his position in Vienna at that time.