(Vienna 1793–1865 Hinterbrühl)
and unknown 19th-century artist
Lake Wolfgangsee, inscribed Waldmüller,
oil on panel, 31.5 x 26 cm, framed (frame damaged), (Rei)

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 for her scientific assistance.

The present painting was created in two phases, which could be reconstructed by recent investigations.
The upper part of the picture with the view of Lake Wolfgangsee in the Salzkammergut is very delicate and of great quality. It displays a great similarity to Waldmüller’s landscape painting ‘Der Wolfgangsee’ from 1835, which is preserved in the collection of the Belvedere under the inventory number 1863 and was probably also executed by Waldmüller at that time.
Waldmüller calls upon this landscape background again in the 1839 painting ‘Die entblätterte Rose’ in order to use it for a portrait of the opera singer Maria Felicitas Malibran. This painting is unfortunately only documented in a black and white photograph. However, it can be understood that Waldmüller used the landscape background with Lake Wolfgangsee and the Dachstein Mountains several times in different contexts.
There is reason to presume that the present lot by Waldmüller was also started as a background for a landscape or portrait, yet remained unfinished in the artist’s studio throughout his lifetime.
After Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s death in 1865, the unfinished painting was probably part of his estate and was completed by an unknown artist in a second phase, based on ‘Wolfgangsee’ from 1835, with the farmhouse and adjacent tree in the foreground. The signature ‘Waldmüller’ at the lower right was also added by this second artist, and not by Waldmüller himself. The present lot clearly comprises two different hands: in the upper half of the painting it is Waldmüller’s hand, in the lower half an unknown painter.