Self-portrait

Few women entered the annals of German art history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as successful artists and entrepreneurs. Largely excluded from art academies and regarded as amateurs, the odds were against their making a name for themselves in the male-dominated art market. Many promising careers foundered before they had even properly begun.

A notable exception in the early nineteenth century was the painter Marie Ellenrieder from Konstanz. In 1813, by which time she had already completed an apprenticeship as a miniaturist, she became the first woman to enrol at the academy of art in Munich. After graduation she spent some years furthering her studies in Rome and Florence; in 1829 she was appointed court painter to the Grand Duke of Baden. In Rome Ellenrieder came into contact with the Nazarenes led by Johann Friedrich Overbeck and, influenced by their concentration on religion in their art, she developed her own ideal of a strictly Catholic form of history painting. Besides making copies of paintings from the Italian Renaissance, she also painted numerous classicist images of saints, the Madonna and entire altars, which earned her the reputation of being deeply pious. Although her works were still held in high esteem in Germany in the late nineteenth century, as tastes changed in the twentieth century they came to be viewed in a more critical light, particularly the sentimental, devotional art of her later years.

However, the importance of this aspect of her work should not be allowed to obscure the fact that even as a young woman Ellenrieder demonstrated a special gift for portraiture, which is apparent in her numerous striking, characterful paintings of people. She had a highly developed ability to pinpoint the individual aura of her sitters and to combine this with the representative nature of a portrait. Among these paintings there is also a handful of self-portraits, which could be described as some of her most private statements. This self-portrait from 1818, now in the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, depicts Ellenrieder at the age of twentyseven shortly after completing her studies in Munich, just as she was making an auspicious start to her career.

Rather than depicting herself with the attributes of a painter, Ellenrieder chose to paint a bourgeois portrait, of the kind that had become increasingly popular in the late eighteenth century. Although her image fills the canvas, her demeanour is entirely proper and the background is neutral. Her alert gaze seems to be directed both outwards and inwards. The dark curls fringing her carefully done hair and the black dress with a gossamer lace collar draw the viewer's attention to her pale, delicately modulated skin. Another eye-catching feature is the two-stranded gold chain with a pearl cross that noticeably emphasises the central axis of the composition. This portrait - in a modest format and with an overall air of restraint - appears to be an accurate reflection of the character of the artist, who was described by those who knew her as extremely modest and deeply religious.