HELFFT, JULIUS EDUARD WILHELM.
Jewish Cemetery.Oil on panel. Signed and dated by the artist lower ...

HELFFT, JULIUS EDUARD WILHELM.
Jewish Cemetery.


Oil on panel. Signed and dated by the artist lower left. 19th-century printed label on verso. (Venice?), 1844.
Framed. 12.5 x 9.5 inches (31 x 23 mm).



Alongside his signature here, the artist writes a location (which this cataloguer is unable to definitively decipher). The artist, Julius Eduard Wilhelm Helfft (1818-94), lived in Germany and often painted in Italy and Switzerland. Helfft studied under the landscape painter Wilhelm Schirmer from 1835 at the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin. Paintings of his were acquired by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, of which at least six hung in Prussian castles. Helfft might have been motivated to paint this Jewish cemetery due to his association with the family of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Indeed Helfft composed a painting of the music room of Felix’s elder sister, Fanny Hensel. See https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-music-room-of-fanny-hensel-nee-mendelssohn-jul ius-eduard-wilhelm-helfft/ogGynnhiUWobrQ? hl=en. Literature: Friedrich von Boetticher: Malerwerke des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Vol. 1, (Dresden 1891, Neudruck Leipzig 1941) p. 488, no. 18. Hans Vollmer (ed.) General Lexicon of the Visual Artists from Antiquity to the Present (Thieme und Becker) Vol. 16, p. 330.