Adolph von Menzel was born in Breslau in 1815, the son of a headmaster, who soon afterwards founded a lithographic press, in which Adolph worked from the age of fourteen. The family moved to Berlin in 1830 and Adolph soon became responsible after his father’s untimely death. In 1833, Menzel attended the Royal Academy of Art, where he met the wallpaper manufacturer Carl Heinrich Arnold, who would become a friend and patron. Success as an artist came early with a commission from the art dealer and publisher Louis Sachse. Menzel joined the prestigious Royal Academy of Art in 1953 as professor. Two years later, Menzel visited Paris for the first time and would return frequently to the French capital. In 1867, Menzel was decorated with the Cross of the Légion d’honneur and awarded a medal for his painting of Frederick and His Troops at the Battle of Hochkirch. The first comprehensive show of his work was mounted in 1884, followed by numerous shows in Germany and abroad. He was made an honorary citizen of Breslau and Berlin, an honorary member of the St Petersburg Academy, and made a member of the Paris and London Academies. Adolph von Menzel died in Berlin in 1905.

The present Menzel drawing from 1888 bears witness to the artist’s adoption of graphite and stump as his most important tools in his later years, after abandoning urban life subjects in oils. As a great admirer of Rembrandt etchings, Menzel ultimately returned to pencil drawings, the medium that he would leave his most important legacy. The present double-sided study relates to Menzel’s gouache Im Peterskeller zu Salzburg. Painted in January 1888 and dedicated to his physician Friedrich Körte for his seventieth birthday, the work depicts the same seated smoking man in profile.[1] The verso is extensively blotted with colorful samples from the artist’s brush, with some of the watercolor also appearing at the bottom of the drawing. The paper support is an invitation to a court ball that took place in Berlin two years prior to when the drawing was made.[2]

[1] Hugo von Tschudi, Adolph von Menzel, Berlin, 1905, no. 665; fig. 1

[2] Printed text: "6. Ende des Festes nach 11 Uhr./ Berlin, den 5. März 1886. / Der Hofmarschall / Graf Radolinski."