Portrait of Marion Lenbach

Portrait of Marion Lenbach by Franz von Lenbach from 1901 depicts the painter's daughter — a subject he returned to repeatedly across the years as she grew from infancy to adulthood. Marion Lenbach was a favored subject precisely because she combined the accessibility of a family member with the freshness of childhood and youth that formal portrait commissions rarely provided. Lenbach's portraits of his daughter represent a more intimate side of his practice — less ceremonial than his commissioned works, more psychologically tender. The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg holds this portrait as part of their collection of German nineteenth-century painting.

Lenbach renders his daughter with a warmth that distinguishes this from his more formal commissioned portraits. His characteristic dark background remains, but the light on the young face is handled with particular delicacy — softer and more flattering than the dramatic chiaroscuro of his statesman portraits. The brushwork in the face is careful and precise; the clothing is more broadly handled.