Prior
to the renovation of the Narodni dom Palace and the new staging of art
collections in the National Gallery of Slovenia, a fine portrait of a Lady in Polish Costume hung among the
works of European masters. Its painter was unknown, and 1837 as the year of its
execution was uncertain. The signature and the date on the canvas are damaged
and do not allow reliable reading. A lucky find of comparative material helped
to solve the problem of both the artist and the identity of the sitter. The
painting proved to be by the German painter Wilhelm Ternite, and the lady
depicted is Louise, Queen Consort of Prussia, the wife of King Frederick
William III.
The
lovely Duchess Luise Auguste Wilhelmine Amalie of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Hanover
1776 – Schloss Hohenzieritz 1810) married the Prussian crown prince of the
Hohenzollern House when she was only seventeen. In 1797 her husband succeeded
to the throne, but as a ruler he was greatly influenced by his determined wife.
Through her patriotic political activity, beneficent deeds and amiable character,
and certainly also because of her beauty, Queen Louise achieved enormous
popularity among the population. She
was a legend in her own lifetime and one of the most frequently portrayed
aristocratic ladies in European history, with a multitude of posthumous
depictions. The Gallery’s painting by Ternite is an example of a portrait
painted many years after Louise’s death.
Painter
Wilhelm Ternite (Neustrelitz 1786 – Potsdam 1871) was at the beginning of his
career when, after training at the academy in Berlin and serving a few years in
the army, he could paint Louise in 1810 when she was still alive. After the end
of Napoleonic Wars he was sent as a commissioner to Paris to retrieve the works
of art that the French had plundered from Prussia. He spent several years in
the French capital, training in the studios of Jacques-Louis David and
Antoine-Jean Gros. In the 1820s he visited Italy and painted scenes from his
travels after which prints were made and published in series. After his return
home he became painter to the court and was appointed in 1926 inspector of
royal art collections in Potsdam and around, which he remained until his
retirement in 1864. He made his name portraying the wider royal family and
other notables of Prussian high society.
The
Gallery painting shows Queen Louise in a parade uniform of the Dragoon
Regiment. Ternite portrayed Louise in a riding habit “à la hussarde” in 1810 before she
died, and this picture became a prototype for a number of reprises. The
relationship of Louise with the Dragoons was also formal, since the king
nominated her in 1806 as chief (or honorary colonel) of the Dragoon Regiment
No. 5 which was then renamed the Regiment of Queen’s Dragoons No. 5. Her role
was naturally just ceremonial. Among her preserved clothes are also her Dragoon
spencer jacket and the chemisette she
wore underneath, both from 1806. Thus the painter had authentic attire at his
disposal while painting Louise decades after her death.
As
far as it has been possible to establish, at least two painted replicas of the
Gallery portrait exist as well as a print, but in all of them Louise’s
headdress is different from the Gallery's. So what is the point of the Polish krakuska in our case? To answer this
question remains a task for the future – as does a reliable answer to the
problem of the date and the provenance of the painting. The National Gallery
acquired it in 1986 when it took charge of the art collections of the Slovene
government. At that time the portrait hung in Brdo Castle near Kranj. A tempting
explanation for the painting’s arrival in Carniola is offered by aristocratic
kinship connections.
The
seventh child out of ten of the Prussian royal couple was a daughter,
Alexandrine (1803–1892). In 1822 she married Paul Friedrich, Grand Duke of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1800–1842), and their second-born child, Luise
(1824–1859), married in 1849 Hugo, Prince of Windischgrätz (1823–1904), and
came to live in Wagensberg Castle (Bogenšperk) in Carniola. It might be then
that the portrait of her grandmother, Queen Louise, came with her. Naturally,
it might have also come later, for the Windischgrätz couple's daughter Marie
(1856–1929) married “back” to the Mecklenburg family, her husband being Duke
Paul Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. However, she continued to spend much of
her time in Carniola. The Windischgrätz family remained the owners of
Wagensberg Castle until the end of WW2, but they had moved away already in 1943
and took with them most of their possessions. How the Gallery painting –
provided it was really with them – survived through the following turbulent
decades and finished in the protocol building at Brdo is not known. The
proposed provenance remains a mere hypothesis until clear – or conflicting – evidence
is found. Whatever the case may be, the excellent Ternite portrait perfectly complements
the Biedermeier portraiture collection in the National Gallery of Slovenia.