Portrait of a Young Frau Rath

(Active in Frankfurt around 1757/58) A documented portrait of the mother of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Catharina Elisabeth Goethe, née Textor (Frankfurt, February 19, 1731 – September 13, 1808). The painting depicts Goethe's mother in her youth—presumably she was about 26 years old when this portrait was made. The lively eyes recur in later portraits, accurately reflecting her self-awareness and well-known propensity for storytelling. She wears a cap on her brushed-back hair, adorned with colored enamel flowers; such flowers are listed in her estate. She wears a blue silk coat trimmed with fur. This coat plays a decisive role in dating the portrait, as her husband, Caspar Goethe, very meticulously and regularly kept the famous household book "Liber Domesticus," mainly in Latin, in which he recorded the purchase of a Russian-style coat with fur trim for 22 guilders in November 1757, "Mantilla pellicea Moscovita," a winter coat with a fur hood, as depicted in the painting. Consequently, Catharina Elisabeth must have been 26 years old at the time of her portrait. This portrait of Goethe's mother was likely commissioned by her parents, the Textors, as it was not listed in her father's household book. Perhaps it later hung in the house on Großer Hirschgraben. In that case, it would be a possible subject of the original furnishings of the Goethe House. Oil on canvas, lined; 87.5 cm x 65 cm. On the reverse of the stretcher, there is a note: "Collection M. H. Franke Murrhardt." Minor restorations and retouching. Framed. This painting is documented and illustrated in the biography "Frau Rat – Elisabeth Goethe, geb. Textor" by Johannes Hefner, Bielefeld/Leipzig, 1908 or 1912. Furthermore, it is illustrated and discussed in the biography "Goethes Mutter" by Dagmar von Gersdorff, 2003. Additionally, there is a photographic reproduction of this painting in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. In Hefner's biography, this "Portrait of the Young Frau Rat" is listed as "in the possession of Adolf Weigel in Leipzig." The Leipzig publisher and antiquarian Adolf Weigel, who founded his antiquarian bookshop in 1892 and specialized in German literature and cultural history, died in 1927. The note on the back of the stretcher, referencing the "Collection of M. H. Franke, Murrhardt," refers to Margarete H. Franke, wife of Richard Franke, a fur trader from Murrhardt. The couple originally worked in the fur industry in Leipzig. In their catalog published in 1968 on their art collection with the theme of fur, this "portrait in a fur coat" is also found. Until that time, information about whom it concerned was lost, as the portrait of Catharina Elisabeth Goethe had been considered lost for a long time and only reappeared in a South German private collection, where it was identified as an anonymous portrait due to the fur coat.