Anton Bayer

Antonín (Anton) Bayer was born in 1768 in Svatá Anna (Czech Republic) and died in 1833 in Prague. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he lived most of his life, except a short stay in Budapest between 1821 and 1823, and another in Vienna around 1825. His work consists mainly of landscapes, portraits, miniatures and genre scenes. The church of St. Gall in Radaun possesses an altar painting by Bayer representing a Bishop Healing a Woman. Most of his clients belonged to the aristocracy, especially the Thun and Nostiz families.

The woman depicted is not precisely identified, but the portrait was once part of a pair entitled "Herr und Dame". The two portraits were sold separately at an auction in Munich in 2004. The man in the other portrait represented either a rich landowner of the city of Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine) or an administrative charge of the imperial family of Austria, according to the auction catalogue. The woman in this portrait would have been his wife. She sits resting her right arm on an Empire style table, with a Doric column and draped green silk curtain in the backdrop. She wears a greyish-blue satin décolleté dress with puff shoulders, a transparent lace bonnet with an extremely delicate floral motif, and a pink mousseline shawl wrapped around her back and left arm. Her black hair is coiffed in the corkscrew style popular at the time. Oil on canvas, probably relined, and recently cleaned. Original frame in carved and gilded wood.

Artist: Anton Bayer (1768-1833)
Signed and dated in the lower right corner "A. Bayer, 1822".
Medium: Oil on canvas.
Condition: Very good condition.
Dimensions: 96 x 74 cm. / 37 3/4 x 29 in.
Frame: 116 x 93 cm. / 45 1/2 x 36 1/2 in. Very good condition.
Origin: Germany.