Miniature portrait of the Polish princess Lucja Franciszka Lubomirska.

(1751 Heilbronn - 1818 Vienna) A significant miniature portrait of the Polish Princess Lucia Franciszka Lubomirska, later Countess Tyszkiewicz (1770-1811), in a leather case. Oval depiction of the princess turned to the left, with a gaze towards the viewer, plucking the winged feathers of a departing, reclining Cupid. She is dressed in a blue gown accented with lace and pearls, and a dark velvet corseted dress. On her head she wears an elegantly styled blue hat with dark gray ostrich feathers and pearls over gray wavy hair. In the background is a bird in a cage, surrounded by a forest landscape. The cage is inscribed and dated "1788." A beautiful tempera on ivory. Decorative, gilded original brass frame with a pearl frieze, adjustable from the reverse. Engraved on the reverse is "Lucy de Lubomirska in 1788, at the age of 18." The case is lined with wine-red velvet and silk. 16.5 cm x 13 cm. Includes a CITES certificate.

A self-taught artist and miniaturist, Heinrich Friedrich Füger studied law in Halle before becoming a student of the painter Adam Friedrich Oeser in Leipzig in 1768. In 1774, he traveled to Vienna and the imperial court, where he created numerous portraits of nobility and figures from politics and society. Through a scholarship in Rome in 1776, he became a student of Anton Raphael Mengs and returned to Austria in 1783 upon his appointment as Vice-Director of the Vienna Academy by State Chancellor Prince Kaunitz. From 1795, he was a court painter in Vienna and Director of the Academy of Fine Arts, taking over the management of the Imperial Picture Gallery in Vienna in 1806. Füger is considered a forerunner of Austrian classicism. His works can be found, among other places, in the Albertina in Vienna and the National Gallery in Berlin. The portrait of Princess Lubomirska is listed in "Schidlof," 1964, Graz, Volume I, p. 273, Plate XI "Princess Lucy Lubomirska Plucking Cupid" and was described there as "magnificent." See also Keil, 1977, p. 79, Thieme-Becker, Volume XII, p. 553. Provenance: From the collection of a significant North German private collection, according to "Schidlof," previously from the collection of E. Arnold, Berlin.