Lot 82: Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix. , Fine unrecorded portrait, signed by the composer ("Felix MendelssohnBartholdy d. 1sten Juli 1840")

by Johann Heinrich Schramm (1810-1865), signed and inscribed by the artist: "N[ach] d[er] Natur, --J.H. Schramm. in Leipzig, gem[ah]lt, 1840" watercolour with pencil, with touches of gum-arabic, overall size: c .28.5 x 23.5cms, very slight discolouration to the field, but the colours generally in fine and fresh condition

Peter Ward Jones, Mendelssohn. An Exhibition (Oxford 1997), p.48 (no.65). We are grateful to Peter Ward Jones for his advice in our cataloguing of this painting.

From the family of the composer, by descent.

This portrait, painted from life in 1840, remained within the Mendelssohn family and has never been published or publicly exhibited. Mendelssohn's wife Cécile reported in a letter to her mother on 7 July 1840 that Schramm had "done quite a good portrait of Felix, which he wants to have engraved". This is probably that portrait, intended to be engraved along with the composer's signature, although no such engraving has ever been traced. Cécile notes in her letter that Scramm presented her with a painting of herself as a "mark of gratitude". There is also a pencil portrait of Mendelssohn by Schramm in the Bodleian Library, dated 1841, apparently a copy of the present painting (Ms. M. Deneke Mendelssohn d.68).