Lot 420: Anton von Maron (Vienna 1733 - 1808 Rome) Portrait

Anton von Maron (Vienna 1733 - 1808 Rome) Portrait of a gentleman in a gold-trimmed blue coat, oil on canvas, 75.5 x 62 cm, carved and gilded frame, (Wo) Traditionally, this brilliantly painted portrait was considered to depict the likeness of Samuel Jennings, executed by the hand of Francis Cotes. Dr. Edgar Peters, however, identified it as an autograph work by Anton von Maron. The sitter is likely to be an English aristocrat on his Grand Tour to Rome. Anton von Maron was a student at the Vienna Academy. He arrived in Rome early in his career and lived in the house of his teacher Anton Raphael Mengs, whose sister Theresa Concordia he married in 1765. Subsequently Maron worked in Vienna, where he successfully pursued his plans to reform the Art Academy and was ennobled in 1772. In 1766 he became a member of the Academy of St. Luke in Rome; in 1784 he was appointed principe and primo consigliere. In 1782 he painted Grand Duke Paul of Russia. He executed five ceiling paintings with scenes from the myth of Aeneas and Dido for the Galleria Borghese. When Mengs travelled to Spain, Maron, who was considered to be his direct heir, took over the majority of his international clients and started a successful career as a portraitist. He painted the famous portrait of Winckelmann, the renowned art historian, a literary representative of the art of Neo-Classicism and friend of Goethe's. Alla partenza del suo maestro Raphael Mengs per la Spagna, ne ereditò gran parte della clientela straniera, iniziando la sua brillante carriera di ritrattista, favorita dalla sostanziale formazione romana e dalla succitata autorevole introduzione, oltre che poi dai suoi contatti con la corte imperiale e l'Accademia viennese (Giancarlo Sestieri, Repertorio della Pittura Romana, vol. I. p.120-122).