signed and dated ‘Guttenberg f 1770’
red chalk
31.5 x 22.5 cm

Provenance:
Collection Veldkamp; Venduhuis, Roosendaal, 20 May 1950, lot 26 [catalogue not traced].

Guttenberg was mainly active as a printmaker and while trained in Germany, he spent a large part of his career in France. From the 1760s he worked mostly in Paris, with the exception of several years spent in Switzerland. In 1780 he permanently settled in Paris where he had close contact with Johann Georg Wille and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. [1] Guttenberg engraved works by both artists, as well as work by Pierre-Alexandre Wille and Johann Heinrich Füssli. This charming portrait, executed in 1770 when the artist had already spent a decade or so in Paris, shows the strong influence Greuze’s celebrated head studies had on Guttenberg. [2]

[1] A. Nabert [red.] et al., De Gruyter, Allgemeines künstler-lexikon, Gunten-Haaren, Berlin and New York, 2010, p. 297.
[2] See for an example; N. Strasser, Dessins Français du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Collection Jean Bonna, Genève, 2016, no. 72; sold at Christie’s, Paris, 27 March 2019, lot 97.