Franz von Stuck,
German 1863-1928-

Portrait of the Artists Daughter Mary;

Franz von Stuck,

German 1863-1928-

Portrait of the Artists Daughter Mary;

black and white chalk, pastel, watercolour and touches of gouache on cardboard, signed, 47x33cm

Provenance: Private Collection, Thuringia, Germany

Note: Born in lower Bavaria, Franz Stuck came from peasant stock, however his talent as an artist was evident from an early age, going on to receive his artistic training from the Academy of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Active as a painter, sculptor, printmaker and architect, Stuck was one of the founders of the Munich Secession in 1892, and soon became amongst the most successful and renowned artists in the city. His large and boldly coloured mythological paintings, characterized by Symbolist overtones, won medals and prizes at exhibitions in Germany, Europe and America over the next three decades, and he was also much in demand as a portrait painter. In 1895 Stuck was appointed a Professor at the Akademie in Munich, where his pupils were to include Paul Klee, Josef Albers, and Wassily Kandinsky. In 1905 he was awarded a Knights Cross of the Order of the Bavarian Throne, which raised him to the nobility, and from this point onwards he signed his works as Franz von Stuck. At the International Exhibition in Venice in 1909 Stuck was given a room to himself, and in the later years of his career began to focus on sculpture over paintings.

Von Stuck was recognized by many of his contemporaries as a gifted draughtsman, and his drawings of male and female nudes were particularly admired. Stuck also made drawings as designs for posters, advertisements and other ephemera.

The subject of this portrait, Mary Stuck (1896-1961), was Franz von Stucks only child, born from an affair with a woman named Anna Maria Brandmaier. The following year the artist married the American Mary Lindpaintner, and in 1904 the couple formally adopted the young girl, who had been christened Maria Franziska but was simply known as Mary. Mary Stuck posed frequently for her father in the 1910s and 1920s, often dressed in costume as a Greek or Spanish girl, bullfighter or gypsy, in works which were much prized by collectors. (She also appears in such grand works as 'Family Portrait: Franz von Stuck with his Wife and Daughter of 1909', today in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, in which she is costumed as a Spanish infanta in a Velasquez dress.)

This striking portrait can be dated to around 1910, when the sitter was around fourteen years old. Mary Stuck is shown here wearing her new motoring bonnet, in which she also appears in several of the artists photographs of her, including one on which the present composition is based. As in several other paintings and drawings of Mary wearing the same bonnet, the deep blue hat here becomes a decorative motif in its own right.

A more finished variant of this composition is in a private collection, while a smaller, circular version is in the collection of the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and an octagonal painting of this composition is in the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio (no. 1914.69). Another small octagonal painted portrait of Mary wearing the same bonnet, in which she is seen full face, is in a private collection. A large pastel study for that painting, also in a private collection, may be stylistically compared to the present sheet.