Rudolf von Arthaber and his Children
Friedrich von Amerling (1803 to 1887) · 1837
A prosperous man sits in a comfortable chair in his own drawing room with his three children gathered around him. The little girl leans on his knee, the older boy stands at his shoulder, and the smallest child holds up a miniature portrait of a young woman. She is their mother, who had died shortly before, and the whole painting turns around her absence. Rudolf von Arthaber was a textile manufacturer and one of the great art collectors of Biedermeier Vienna, and he commissioned Friedrich von Amerling, the most fashionable portraitist in the city, to record his family as it now was.
Amerling had studied in London with Thomas Lawrence and brought back a fluent, glossy manner that made every sitter look relaxed and every fabric expensive. Look at the velvet of the chair, the sheen of the children's dresses, and the papers and books on the table that tell you this is a working man as well as a father. The composition is a gentle pyramid, with the miniature held up as its emotional centre. The light comes from the left, exactly as it would in a real Viennese apartment, and the room is painted with the same care as the people.
The Biedermeier family portrait was a new kind of picture. Earlier centuries had painted aristocrats in armour and robes; here a factory owner in a house coat is shown as a good father, and that is his claim to dignity. The painting entered the state collection in the twentieth century. Amerling's later career took him to portraits of the emperor and the court, but he never painted anything more tender than this widower and his children.
Did You Know? The small portrait the youngest child holds up shows the children's mother, who had recently died; the whole painting is built around her absence.
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