(Wiedensahl 1832–1908 Mechtshausen)
A self portrait, in a hat and smoking, in half profile facing right, monogrammed and dated W. B. (18)94 s.i.f, pen and brown ink on paper, 15,2 x 10,4 cm, mounted, framed, (Sch)

Provenance:
Collection Otto Nöldeke (1867-1948), Mechtshausen, the artist’s nephew, until ca. 1909; Galerie Heinemann, Munich, December 1909 (Heinemann No. 1152);
Hagenbund, Wien, 1909; Collection Richard Knaur (1870-1938), Vienne;
his heirs, Private collection, Austria.

Literature:
Fritz Novotny, Wilhelm Busch als Zeichner und Maler, Vienna 1949, p. 100; Wilhelm-Busch-Jahrbuch, Hannover 1956, p. 15; Ruth Brunngraber-Malottke, Wilhelm Busch - Handzeichnungen nach der Natur, Werkverzeichnis, Stuttgart 1992, Cat. 6, p. 57 (Ill.).

The painter, draughtsman and writer Heinrich Christian Wilhelm Busch was born in Wiedensahl near Hannover on 15th April 1832 and became wellknown through his satirical pictural narratives such as Max & Moritz, Fips, der Affe or Die Fromme Helene. These works have established his fame. More than hundred years after his death Busch is still considered one of the most significant humoristic draughtsman and storytellers. Drawing remained the preferred technique in his entire artistic career, whereas he bequeathed only a small number of paintings. After having attended the academies in Düsseldorf, Munich and Antwerp with minor success, Busch returned to his birthplace Wiedensahl and took up drawing and illustrating in the beginning 1870s again. The small format of a sketch and its inherent capacity to express the momentary as well as the sentiment had an impact on his expressive and sketchlike penstroke. Spontaneity and fleetingness applied also to his painterly work, to which he turned in the 1880s after he had gained success with his pictural narratives.

The present drawing is presumably the best known and most significant self-portrait of Wilhelm Busch. Since 1949 it has been considered lost and has only been known through reproductions in the art historical literature. It illustrated the frontispiece of the catalogue „Wilhelm Busch als Maler und Zeichner“, Vienna 1949 by Fritz Novotny. Then any traces of it disappeared. It has been kept in Austrian private possession for several generations, and we are all the more pleased that the drawing has reappeared now. It shows the artist at the age of 62 in a hat with a broad brim, with an intensive look and in half-profile facing right. He wears a full beard which was fashionable in the second half of the 1860s; this and the hint of some faint smoke deriving from a cigarette having almost burned down dangling loosely in the left corner of the artist’s mouth contribute to the expression of the sheet.

The drawing which is dated 1894 is one of seven known drawn self portraits of the artist, which he executed between 1853 and 1895 (Brunngraber-Malottke 1992, Cats. 1–7); the present portrait drawing stands out with its swirling and vigorous penstrokes, which lend the drawing a special expressiveness. Only one year later, in 1895, Busch painted the „Selbstportrait in eingegrenzter Komposition” (Self-portrait in confined composition) for which the artist used a very small format (6,5 x 6,9 cm, Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, Hannover, Inv.-Nr. 2/032). In the Hannover drawing the artist is also looking at us in full frontal view and is wearing a hat with a broad brim and holding a cigarette between the lips which are almost completely covered by his full beard. Both drawings are related to each other through their vigorous line and an expressive graphic penstroke, which in the later work of around 1895 was somewhat suppressed in the area of the face.

We are grateful to Dr. Ruth Brunngraber-Malottke for the scientific support and for the confirmation of the drawing’s attribution after examining the original sheet.