Lady with Large White Hat, n. d.

The German-Austrian painter and graphic artist Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel (1881–1965) is known primarily as the most eminent animal painter of Austrian Modernism. Born in Oberfranken, he received his artistic training at the Academies and Schools of Arts and Crafts of Munich and Vienna. Throughout the first two decades of the 20th century, Jungnickel’s oeuvre was influenced by his acquaintance with artists including Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956), Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980), Alfred Roller (1864–1935) and Egon Schiele (1890–1918). As impressively illustrated by this gouache portrait drawing of an elegant lady in a three-quarter view, Jungnickel primarily preferred graphic techniques. He skillfully placed colored and white heightening onto a framework of lines drawn with pencil and black chalk, in order to emphasize the flesh color and the hat opulently decorated with ostrich feathers. This extravagant fashion accessory allows us to approximately date the work to the 1910s.

MR, 2021