Portrait of the Composer V. J. Tomášek

Antonín Machek

Antonín Machek - Portrait of the Composer V. J. Tomášek
Machek's contemporary and friend Václav Jan Tomášek (1774-1850) was an outstanding 19th-century composer and music teacher. He wrote many pieces of Church and secular music, even an opera. As an appreciated composer he was commissioned to write a solemn mass - Missa Solemnis in C major - for the 1836 coronation of Ferdinand V king of Bohemia. This representative portrait combines the prevailing Empire style with Classicist plastic exaggeration, its veracity raising it well above the average of contemporaneous art. Machek provided the portrait with some typical attributes: Tomášek holds the printed score of his 1813 Mass No.1, on the table in front of him stands a metronome and in the background, behind volumes of music, is a pseudo-ancient statue of a Muse with a lyre.
date:
measurements: height 79 cm
width 61 cm
material: canvas
technique: oil
inscription:
inventory number: O 795
gallery collection: Collection of 19th Century Art and Classical Modernism

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