Gustav Heinrich Naeke (1786-1835)

Head of an Old Man

Graphite on Wove Paper,

Inscribed: “Prof Naeke”

Date: c1828

Dimensions 30 x 22.5cm (11 3/4 x 8 3/4”)

The drawing is likely a pendant to Head of a Young Man in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Though traditionally dated to 1818, the reappearance of the present study, with the inscription of “Prof Naeke” suggests it may have been drawn after Naeke became professor at the Dresden Academy in 1828. It is also possible that the inscription, appearing on many of Naeke’s drawings, was a later annotation.

Gustav Heinrich Naeke was an early addition to the circle of German-speaking artists, living in Rome in the early 19th century. He arrived from Dresden in 1817 on a scholarship from the King of Saxony. A selection of projects earlier in the decade suggest he was already rejecting classicism and his later affiliation to the Nazarenes formalised the trend.

But his education wasn’t wholly orthodox and his time under Ferdinand Hartmann (1774-1842) professor at the Dresden Academy from 1810, brought him close to an alternate branch of German Romanticism. Hartmann defended Caspar David Friedrich in print in 1809. Naeke visited Friedrich in his studio in early 1811. In a letter sent to the collector Dr Ludwig Puttrich (9th June,1811), Naeke mentions Friedrich’s Winter Landscape with a Church.

The Nazarene movement sought to push back beyond the classical intrusions of the high renaissance, and took its inspiration from the Middle ages. But it wasn’t only a rejection of classical forms, but of the art academies that had replaced guilds and apprenticeships. Such feelings were not specific to Germany, but the founding of the Guild of St Luke (Nazarenes) in 1809 was perhaps the earliest concerted reaction against them, predating the first meeting of the pre-Raphaelites by almost four decades. It was perhaps with some irony that Naeke later became history painter at the Dresden Academy (1824) and professor (1828).