Provenance: Master baker Reinhard van Hauen (collector's mark on the reverse dated 1931). Bassenge, “Gemälde Alter und Neuerer Meister”, 30 November 2023, no. 6052.

Works by the painter Ditlev Blunck rarely come up for auction. Blunck, who was from Holstein by origin, studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He was a student of C.A. Lorentzen (1749–1828), received private tuition from C.W. Eckersberg (1783–1853), and after a stay at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich to train as a history painter in the years 1818–1820, he returned to the academy in Copenhagen and became a student of J.L. Lund (1777–1867). In 1828, he received a travel grant to Rome, where he stayed for the next almost 10 years and became a part of the circle around the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844). During his stay in Rome he became greatly influenced by the German Nazarenes.

Blunck particularly practiced history painting, genre painting and religious and mythological motifs. He is considered a significant part of the Danish Golden Age - nevertheless, he belongs to the more unknown painters of the period, who, despite recognition in his days, has been overlooked in Danish art history for many years. This was probably due to the fact that in 1840 he was expelled from Denmark as a result of a homosexual offence; that he fought on the German side during the First Schleswig War; and that he differed from his fellow Danish painters by his orientation towards German romanticism and a more idealizing and stylised artistic expression.

After his expulsion from Denmark, he travelled to his native region and to Munich, and in 1841 he settled in Vienna, where the present painting is painted. Throughout the 1840s he painted a number of self-portraits, including this painting.

The present painting will be included in the supplementary volume of Karin Bechmann Søndergaard's Catalogue Raisonné of Ditlev Blunck's oeuvre.