print
- Museum number
- 1838,1215.332
- Description
-
Self-portrait as an etcher with a spider at the window. 1758
Etching
- Production date
- 1758
- Dimensions
-
Height: 235 millimetres
-
Width: 178 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Antony Griffiths and Frances Carey, 'German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe', BM 1994, no. 16 :
This is the second of two self-portraits by Schmidt, executed in conscious emulation of Rembrandt. The first was done in Berlin in 1752 while this plate was made in St Petersburg; it closely follows Rembrandt's self-portrait etching of 1648 which shows the artist drawing on a table by an open window (Hind 229). According to Crayen's catalogue, Schmidt is engaged in drawing his own portrait, surrounded by a wealth of anecdotal detail, which includes a Russian landscape scene through the window and a reference to his musical taste. The allusion to the inexorable processes of time and fate provided by the spider spinning its web may be an oblique comment on the artist's self-imposed exile from his home and his wife, who did not accompany him to Russia; he subsequently etched her portrait in 1761, probably as a pair to his own. Goethe owned an impression of this subject (Schuchardt 338) as he did also of Schmidt's two engravings after self-portraits by Quentin de la Tour (Schuchardt 173-5, under de la Tour; see 1838,1215.143).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1994/5 Sept-Jan, BM, 'German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe', no. 16
- Acquisition date
- 1838
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1838,1215.332