(Vienna 1793–1865 Hinterbrühl)
Lake Wolfgangsee (unfinished), inscribed Waldmüller, oil on panel, 31.5 x 26 cm, framed (frame damaged)

Provenance:
Private Collection Austria.

Compare:
Rupert Feuchtmüller, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller 1793–1865. Leben, Schriften, Werke, Vienna 1996, p. 466, no. 481 and p. 476 no. 584.

We are grateful to Dr. Sabine Grabner, Belvedere, for the scientific assistance.

The present painting was created in two phases, which have been reconstructed by recent research: the upper part of the painting, with its view of Lake Wolfgangsee in the Salzkammergut, is exceptionally fine and good quality. It shows great similarity to Waldmüller‘s landscape painting „Lake Wolfgangsee“ from 1835, which is in the Belvedere‘s collection under inventory number 1863, and was probably also executed by Waldmüller around this time.
In the painting „The Defoliated Rose“ from 1839, Waldmüller takes up this landscape background once again to use it for a portrait of the opera singer Maria Felicitas Malibran. Unfortunately, this painting is only documented by a black-and-white photograph. However, it shows that Waldmüller used the landscape background with Lake Wolfgangsee and the Dachstein several times in different contexts.
It seems reasonable to assume that the present lot was also started by Waldmüller as a background for a landscape painting or portrait, but remained unfinished and was in the artist‘s studio inventory during his lifetime.
After Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller‘s death in 1865, the unfinished picture was presumably part of his estate and was completed in a second phase, following the „Wolfgangsee“ of 1835, by an unknown artist with the farmhouse and flanking tree in the foreground. The inscription Waldmüller on the lower right was also added by this second artist and not by Waldmüller himself. The present lot clearly shows two different hands: in the upper half of the picture Waldmüller‘s hand, in the lower half that of an unknown painter.