A Picture and its History: August von Kloeber’s Portrait of Beethoven

Special Exhibition in the Beethoven House Bonn22nd November 2007 to 4th May 2008

Virtually no other musician was ever portrayed as often asLudwig van Beethoven, and the fact that in modern times thecomposer has become something of a “cultural icon” resultsindeed from this extraordinary interest shown by sculptors,painters and illustrators. Influenced by their works andsketches, there exists today a general awareness linkingBeethoven with a range of seemingly unambiguous charac-teristics which make him forever and immediately recognis-able. Among these are his wild mane of hair, his gloweringand very energetic expression and his gaze which is directedinto the distance or to the heavens.

One of the first portraits which included these singularfeatures in the portrayal of Beethoven and which conveyedthem to a wider public was a work by the German historypainter August von Kloeber (1793-1864). More than almostany other likeness of Beethoven this portrait has formed thatconception of Beethoven’s appearance which has always beenheld by posterity. The special exhibition illustrates the makingof this portrait in its different versions. In addition, it shows aselection from the large group of pictures and objects whicheven today utilise Kloeber’s portrait, whether it be to create

a new romantic orsatirical likeness ofBeethoven, or as deco-ration for every-dayobjects and souvenirs.

Pencil drawing by August von Kloeber, 1818

1. August von Kloeber’s Portrait of Beethoven – its making and the legend

In the summer of 1818 Beethoven spent some time togetherwith his nephew Karl in Mödling near Vienna, where herented rooms in a house (now Haupstrasse 79) belonging tothe master-potter Jakob Duschek. There he was visited by the25 year old painter August von Kloeber, who travelled therefor the expressed purpose of drawing the composer’s portrait.Kloeber had first studied architecture in his home town ofBreslaw, and then from 1810 painting in Berlin. After a breakto take part in the campaigns against Napoleon and for a tripto Paris, he continued his studies in 1814 in Vienna, where hewas chiefly occupied with the study of old masters in thegaleries and collections of the city. At the same time he createda series of his own works, among them portraits of the novel-list Karoline Pichler and the poet Franz Grillparzer. These twolikenesses were done for Baron von Skrbenski, the youngartist’s brother-in-law, who possessed a collection of portraitsof Viennese celebrities. It was Skrbenski’s wish that hisgallery should also contain a portrait of Ludwig vanBeethoven, which led Kloeber’s travelling to Mödling.

Since Beethoven had been informed of his visit in advance byan acquaintance, the cellist Joseph Valentin Dont (1776-1833), the painter was well received and the composer wasindeed willing to sit model for Kloeber several times. At leastthree drawings resulted from these sittings, two of which stillexist. The most important of the studies shows the composer’sface and shoulders. In contrast to many of the later, veryidealised and melodramatic likenesses, it conveys a vital andnatural impression of Beethoven’s appearance during themiddle part of his life. As the painter later recalled, thecomposer also found this study very true-to-life and was espe-cially pleased with the way his hairstyle was rendered. Andindeed it was the rendition of the composer’s seeminglyuntamed mane of hair that Kloeber created a motif uponwhich almost every subsequent likeness of Beethoven was toseize. Also the idea of showing the musician with his gazeraised to heaven and thus emphasising his particular inspira-tion, prompted emulation by numerous artists. August vonKloeber’s study thus defined some of the most importantcriteria which were to characterise the development ofBeethoven iconography in the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies.

The painting, which the artist began while still in Mödlingbased on the studies he had done of Beethoven, showed thecomposer together with his nephew in full-figure out-of-

doors. Kloeber must have finished the picture quickly afterhis return to Vienna, for it was reviewed most favourably inthe culture journal “Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur,Theater und Mode” (No. 139, pp. 1134-1135) on 19th

November 1818. Since then however every trace of the por-trait has been lost, only those references which have survivedenable us to surmise how the painting may have looked.

2. The Kloeber Portrait and the romantic picture ofBeethoven

In 1822, when August von Kloeber had already left Vienna,he produced on the basis of his sketches and from memory asecond portrait of Beethoven – this time as a crayon drawing.Admittedly, this likeness seems less vivacious and sponta-neous than the 1818 drawing, but nevertheless the paintersucceeds in idealising the composer’s features without givingthem a classical stiffness or without departing too far from theoriginal. His portrayal is thus in keeping with the romantical-ly inflated interpretation contained in the portrayals ofBeethoven which were particularly dominant in the mid- andlate nineteenth century.

When at last in 1841 and 1843 Kloeber published a lithogra-phy produced from his crayon drawing, it was, accordingly,extemely popular. Not only music-loving amateurs andadmirers of Beethoven possessed that version of Kloeber’s

Beethoven portrait, butalso numerous distin-guished musicians (forinstance the composersFranz Liszt and PeterTchaikowsky). In thisway Kloeber’s ide-alised interpretationhad an enduring influ-ence on the generalpublic’s perception ofBeethoven’s appear-ance in a way that noother portrait did. (Justhow influential it was is

Lithography by Carl Fischer afterthe crayon drawing by August vonKloeber, 1843

shown by the fact that it was used in several editions ofMeyers Encyclopedia.)

The lithography’s popularity was such that it was often repro-duced and copied, whereby there could be smaller or greatervariations on the original and there is a noted tendencytowards an increasing idealisation of Beethoven. For exampleAlfred Krausse (1829-1894) produced a portrayal as early as1855, which in its main elements followed Kloeber’s originalquite closely, but which on the whole created a much moreclassical impression and for that reason enjoyed great popu-larity itself. Miniaturists and commercial artists in particularhave copied Krausse’s interpretation of Kloeber’s lithographyover and over again, even until the present day. It remains oneof the most frequently used sources for any postage stamps orspecial reproductions which are adorned by Beethoven’slikeness.

In the years around 1900 pure fantasy portraits of Beethovenenjoyed great popularity, in which the composer’s featurescould be rejuvenated and prettified. For such portrayals tooKloeber’s lithography was often used as the source, since itwas much more easily obtainable and therefore much betterknown than other authentic portraits of Beethoven, such asthe picture by Joseph Karl Stieler (1781-1858), painted in1820, which is so popular today. In the fantasy portraits usu-ally only the general characteristics of Kloeber’s portrayalwould be taken up and combined with physiognomic ele-ments from other Beethovenportraits, such as the onepainted in 1819 byFerdinand Schimon(1797-1852) and thelife mask of thecomposer made in1812. Good exam-ples of this type ofrather free treat-ment of the origi-nal are the portraitby Carl Jäger(1833-1887) whichwas very popular in

Painting by Julius Schrader, 1862

the nineteenth century and which is still often reproducedtoday, and the depictions by Albert Gräfle (1807-1889) undJulius Schrader (1815-1900). The conceptions of Beethoven’sappearance which developed out of such romantic portraitsserved to feed the Beethoven image of those who preferred toemphasise a classical and idealised view of the composer.

3. The Reception of the Kloeber Portrait in the 20thCentury

In the twentieth century also, the lithography made fromAugust von Kloeber’s crayon drawing remained one of themost important and best known portrayals of Beethoven,which even today, together with Joseph Karl Stieler’s paint-ing, is still used as a guideline. The portrait is used not onlyin applied art and design, for instance for posters, book- andrecord-covers and souvenirs, but also in creative art. As thedevelopment of interpretive portrayal of Beethoven in thevisual arts reached a temporary conclusion with the SecondWorld War, the interest in the familiar, authentic Beethovenportraits increased once again and the visual arts reverted inthe main to playing with well-known motifs. In other words,one took elements of the particularly popular likenesses ofBeethoven, cited or dismantled them and then re-assembledthem, thus creating unfamiliar variations which can expressthe difficult relationship between modern and traditional artand culture. Such playful or serious adaptations of Kloeber’soriginal are to be found for instance in the work of HeinoBreilmann (1921-2001) and Ulrich Klieber (*1953) or - in ahumorous interpretation - in work of Michael MatthiasPrechtl (*1926). Among the more internationally successfulalienations of Kloeber’s portrait is a drawing by ThomasBayrle (*1937), in which the composer’s likeness is made upof different coloured music notes.

All these examples show how strongly illustrated portrayalsof Beethoven have shaped general conceptions of him as aperson, and how closely linked these conceptions are in theconsciousness of the modern public with other less popularportraits of the composer. But at the same time it becomesclear how difficult it is today to view Beethoven’s music inde-pendently of the myths which, not least because of the por-traits, have arisen around his person.

Silke Bettermann

Illustration by Thomas Bayrle, 1971

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