(Vienna 1805–1845)
The Opening of the Will II, compositional sketch, oil on panel, 35 x 42.2 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Collection of Pietro di Galvagni (1797–1868); Vienna;
Collection of August Artaria (1807-1893), Vienna, since at least 1877;
His sale, H. O. Miethke, Vienna, 16 January 1886, lot 117(as “Die Pfändung”);
acquired from the above;
Collection of Johann Frohner (1829-1894), Vienna;
by inheritance to his son Roman Franz Frohner (1888–1940), Vienna;
Collection of Richard Polsterer (1880-1970); Vienna since before 1937;
His heirs - Private Collection, Austria.

Catalogued and illustrated in:
Sabine Grabner, Der Maler Josef Danhauser. Biedermeierzeit im Bild. Monografie und Werkverzeichnis, Vienna 2011, p. 299, no. 388a.

Compare:
Friedrich von Boetticher, Malerwerke des 19. Jahrhunderts, vol. I, 1, Hofheim am Taunus 1979, p. 215, no. 28.

We are grateful to Dr. Sabine Grabner for her scientific assistance.

The present lot is the draft composition for Josef Danhauser’s painting “The Opening of the Will II” (1844), which is now in the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein, Vaduz-Vienna (inv. no. GE 2139). The picture shows the moment when the notary in the centre of the scene declares the young family to his left to be his heirs. Here Danhauser varies the pictorial motif of the first version from 1839 (Belvedere, Vienna, inv. no. 2086), which possibly refers back to Sir Walter Scott’s novel Guy Mannering or the Astrologer, in which the words of the will caused great unrest among those present.
As in the first version, the scene is set in the testator’s room, but in contrast to the earlier version, Danhauser strives in this depiction of the reading of the will for the greatest possible spatial expansion of the events and moves the scene into the middle ground, a practice that is characteristic of his works of the 1840s. This has the effect of making the main protagonists more prominent, even though their emotional reactions have been toned down. Except for a few details, Danhauser has adopted the composition of the study: only the older man standing in the background no longer holds his hat in his hand, but hands it to the seated, black-haired woman. With the juxtaposition of the bourgeois virtues illustrated by the young family from humble beginnings and the rich corrupted by money, Danhauser probably intended to comment on the morality of his contemporaries.