R. Wagner. Autograph letter about his copy of Waldmüller's portrait of Beethoven, 1869

WAGNER, RICHARD

Autograph letter signed ("Richard Wagner"), about the copy he had commissioned of Waldmüller's portrait of Beethoven, 16 June 1869

to an unnamed recipient (the painter Robert Krausse), requesting that he sends him the portrait of Beethoven as soon as possible, telling him that he has already had a frame made for it ("...Sie mich besonders verbinden werden wenn Sie das versprochene Portrait Beethoven's sobald als möglich in meinen Besitz gelangen lassen wollen...der Rahmen ist bereits fertig..."), and thanking him for his letter

1 page, 4to, integral blank, framed and glazed (overall size 37.5 x 32cm), Lucerne, Hof Tribschen, 16 June 1869, a few light stains

This letter marks a particular moment in Wagner's life-long veneration of Beethoven, whose music he regularly extolled whilst seated below this portrait, as Cosima Wagner's diaries reveal. Her entry for 1 July 1869 records the joyful arrival "of Beethoven's portrait, which R. has had copied (from the original then in Hermann Härtel's possession). We receive the great man as a friend and benefactor...". Wagner had acquired Härtel's permission to have an exact copy made of the famous portrait by F.G. Waldmüller (1823), from Robert Krausse in Leipzig.  Both Härtel's original and Wagner's copy were destroyed by Allied bombings in 1943 and 1945. Only Waldmüller's study for his portrait survives, now in the Vienna Museum of Art History.