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)

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a significant art collector. During his life he amassed a collection of almost 400 portraits and approaching 40 silhouettes. After his death, a listing of this “Bildniß-Sammlung” was included in the Verzeichniß des musikalischen Nachlasses des verstorbenen Capellmeisters Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Hamburg: Schneibes, 1790). As one might expect from a significant member of the Bach family of musicians, these portraits were almost exclusively of musicians, composers, and music theorists. But the collection was dispersed, sold off by Bach’s widow and daughter in small lots to various people, including Johann Jakob Heinrich Westphal, Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, Ernst Ludwig Gerber, and Georg Pölchau, among others. During the nineteenth century these collections were further dispersed, so that by the early twentieth century relatively few had been identified, such as the oil paintings of C. P .E. Bach’s grandfather 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—Preußischer 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 reconstruct the extensive collection. This has now been undertaken by Dr. Annette Richards of Cornell University, and her research appears in this two-volume supplement to the complete edition of C. P. E. Bach’s works. Carried out over several years, this painstaking work in many libraries 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 volumes is the catalog with entries following the alphabetical sequence found in the 1790 “Bildniß-Sammlung.” Each entry gives the full name and dates of the person depicted; the description that appears in the 1790 alphabetical listing; explanation of the techniques involved (woodcut, engraving, mezzotint, drawing, or painting); material on which the portrait appears (paper, canvas); media (ink, oil, pencil, charcoal, pastel); identity of the artist and/or engraver; dimensions of the portrait; whether framed under glass, or not; provenance (if known); current location; and appropriate references. The result is a considerable expansion of the information that is found in the 1790 listing of the portraits. Many were originally published as frontispieces to the books these authors had written, or they were issued as illustrations of the musicians and/or composers that had been written about in a particular publication. These published portraits often contain more information than is found in the 1790 listing. Some of this information is little more than the year of birth of the subject, together with his or her age at the time the portrait was executed. But others are much more extensive and include annotations and inscriptions of various kinds, such as brief biographies, laudatory verse, and poetic epitaphs. Similarly, original paintings or drawings can include various annotations beyond a signature and date, and...