Restoring a Donation: Henriette von Carlowitz

18.12.2018
Alte Nationalgalerie

In the wake of the large-scale Graff retrospective in 2014, the Alte Nationalgalerie has been able to expand its collection to include Graff’s portrait of Henriette von Carlowitz. Patron of the arts and collector Christoph Müller acquired the painting by the leading portraitist of the Enlightenment at a 2014 auction, generously donating the work to the Nationalgalerie Collection.

Conservation and restoration work have not only returned the picture to its original beauty; a technologically-assisted investigation also turned up relevant clues about the artist’s methods and the history of the work. After almost 250 years in private ownership, the portrait of Henriette von Carlowitz is now being presented to the public for the first time in a small, single-room exhibition.