(Wien 1829-1885)
Allegory of Truth, signed Canon, oil on canvas, 165 x 225, unframed

Provenance:
Collection Siegwart (1861-1929) and Irma (1866-1945)Mayer von Ketschendorf, Vienna;
Thence by descent to their daughter Marguerite Mayer von Ketschendorf (1894-1970);
Thence by descent to the present owner – European Private Collection.

Compare:
Franz Joseph Drewes, Hans Canon (1829-1885) Werkverzeichnis und Monographie I und II, Hildesheim 1994, p. 468, 804, No. 294
Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des 19. Jahrhunderts, Hofheim am Taunus 1979, Bd. I,1 p. 169, No. 81

The following Allegory of Truth by the academic painter Hans Canon is a second – almost identical – version of a larger painting presented at the Canon Exhibition in Vienna 1886. The central figure sitting on a throne holding a mirror represents the truth, she is removing a veil from the kneeling figure’s face to the right, which shrinks away from her reflection. While Drewes interprets the figure of the elderly man in red as the devil, it is more likely that he is St James, wearing his characteristic pilgrim’s robe with a scallop shell hanging from his hat. In the background, a snake curls itself around the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil. To the left, an angel crowns the truth with a laurel crown, while Fama blows her trumpet in the foreground. The painting allows several layers of interpretation, nevertheless, it is likely to represent the victory of truth and the redemption of the soul (represented by the kneeling figure), which is freed from the original sin (tree of life) with the aid of faith (St James).

A student of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Carl Rahl, the history and portrait painter Hans Canon became one of the best-known painters of the Viennese Ringstraße era. Canon’s admiration of the old masters, particularly of Rubens and Tizian is perceptible in all his oeuvre, but especially in the following lot.