Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Portrait Collection I: Catalogue ed. by Annette Richards, and: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Portrait Collection II: Plates ed. by Annette Richards (review)

Abstract

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Portrait Collection I: Catalogue. Edited by Annette Richards, appendices edited by Paul Corneilson. (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, series VIII: Supplement, vol. 4.1.) Los Altos, CA: The Packard Humanities Institute, 2012. [x, 238 p. ISBN 9781933280691. $75 (set).] Illustra- tions, silhouettes, appendices, index.Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Portrait Collection II: Plates. Edited by Annette Richards, appendices edited by Paul Corneilson. (Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, series VIII: Supplement, vol. 4.2.) Los Altos, CA: The Packard Humanities Institute, 2012. [x, 340 p. ISBN 9781933280691. $75 (set).] Illustra- tions, silhouettes, appendices.Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a signifi- cant art collector. During his life he amassed a collection of almost 400 portraits and approaching 40 silhouettes. After his death, a listing of this Bildnis-Sammlung was included in the Verzeichnis des musikali- schen Nachlasses des verstorbenen Capellmeisters Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Hamburg: Schneibes, 1790). As one might expect from a significant member of the Bach fam- ily of musicians, these portraits were almost exclusively of musicians, composers, and music theorists. But the collection was dis- persed, sold off by Bach's widow and daughter in small lots to various people, in- cluding Johann Jakob Heinrich Westphal, Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, Ernst Ludwig Gerber, and Georg Polchau, among others. During the nineteenth cen- tury these collections were further dis- persed, so that by the early twentieth cen- tury relatively few had been identified, such as the oil paintings of C. P .E. Bach's grand- father and father, Ambrosius and Johann Sebastian, one or two pastels, such as the one of the Meiningen Bach, Johann Ludwig, as well as a number of portraits by C. P. E. Bach's son, Johann Sebastian the younger. But many of the unique drawings, pastels and paintings remained unlocated. Some of the items were known to be in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preusischer Kulturbesitz, and possibly in Belgium, but no extensive systematic search had been undertaken to locate as many as possible of the actual portraits in Bach's collection and thus no attempt had been made to recon- struct the extensive collection. This has now been undertaken by Dr. Annette Richards of Cornell University, and her re- search appears in this two-volume supple- ment to the complete edition of C. P. E. Bach's works. Carried out over several years, this painstaking work in many li- braries and archives across Europe and America has resulted in an authoritative catalog and reconstruction of C. P. E. Bach's collection of portraits. Although it is not possible to account for every entry in the 1790 listing, a significant number of the portraits that Bach once owned are here identified and annotated.The first of the two supplementary vol- umes is the catalog with entries following the alphabetical sequence found in the 1790 Bildnis-Sammlung. Each entry gives the full name and dates of the person de- picted; the description that appears in the 1790 alphabetical listing; explanation of the techniques involved (woodcut, engrav- ing, mezzotint, drawing, or painting); mate- rial on which the portrait appears (paper, canvas); media (ink, oil, pencil, charcoal, pastel); identity of the artist and/or en- graver; dimensions of the portrait; whether framed under glass, or not; provenance (if known); current location; and appropriate references. …