(Wien 1812–1905)
A portrait of a young woman in half profile, resting her arm on a parapet, signed and dated Rudolf Alt 1838, watercolour on paper, 24 x 18 cm, framed, stained, the fragment of a watercolour sketch on the reverse, slightly browned, (Hu)

We are grateful to Dr. Maria Luise Sternath for the scientific support.

In an autobiographic and fragmentary note Rudolf von Alt wrote that he had studied figure painting for four years and also had participated in two winter sessions of landscape painting at the Vienna Academy. Two remarks by Ludwig Hevesi and Artur Roessler give evidence that Rudolf von Alt for some time considered also genre- and portrait painting as subject of his artistic activity. Roessler mentions that Rudolf may have become a portrait painter but finally changed to landscape painting in order to avoid being a competitor of Kriehuber. According to Roessler Alt did not want to remain a painter of cut-out figures (Mandlbogen – figures cut out from thin cardboard or paper) but aimed at reflecting the entire appearance of the world with all its phenomena in his art which also made him merge figures in a staffage. Several existing studies and portraits show Alt’s interest in persons of his life and surrounding as for example Louise Flach and her daughter of 1834 and Hermine Alt of 1841. (After Alice Hoppe-Harnoncourt, in: Exh. Cat. Albertina Rudolf von Alt 1812-1905, Vienna 2005, pp. 147 and 148).