October 30, 2009
Fanny Mendelssohn Portrait Exhibited
The Jewish Museum in NYC has a new acquisition: Portrait of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, 1842, by 19th century German artist Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, has been added to the "Modernity" section of Culture and Continuity. The subject of this portrait was the sister of famous composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a talented composer and musician in her own right. Fanny Hensel was the wife of a fellow painter, Wilhelm Hensel, whom Oppenheim met in Rome with the Nazarenes. Oppenheim, widely recognized as a portraitist, is known as the first Jewish artist to have benefited from the Emancipation, when new civil rights permitted Jews entry into academies of art for the first time in Europe. Extensively patronized by the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild family, Oppenheim characterized himself (immodestly) as "a painter to the Rothschilds and the Rothschild of painters."http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/CultureAndContinuity
The Jewish Museum
1109 5th Ave at 92nd St
New York NY 10128
Posted by jmwc at October 30, 2009 03:41 PM