A Painting Hangs Over My Life

[cali]

Last edited Tue Jun 3, 2014, 05:46 AM - Edit history (1)

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A painting hangs over all 61 years of my life. It hung in my parents' living room wherever they lived, 5 houses in total, I think. I have a good framed photographic copy of it hanging in my home. The original is is a life size- or close to it- head to toe portrait of two young women in formal dress of the period, on a stone balcony against a backdrop of trees with heavy foliage and a cloud streaked blue sky. They are clothed in pink silk and white satin. I always thought of them as the Lady in Pink and the Lady in White.

The Lady in Pink, who is seated on what I imagine to be a stone bench; imagine because her voluminous skirts obscure what she is actually perched on, is my great-great grandmother. The Lady in White is her younger sister. They are in their late teens or early twenties.

They were painted, frozen on that stone balcony, by their brother Louis Ludwig Neustatter, born in Munich in 1829. I believe the painting of his two sisters was done in the tumultuous year or 1848, a year in which revolution swept across the European continent like tumbleweeds. He would have been a mere 19 or 20 at the time. It's an accomplished work, far better I think than his later saccharine genre paintings of simpering children picking wildflowers or prancing in adoring delight about a brown robed monk.

Neustatter became well known in subsequent years as a fashionable portrait painter, first in Vienna and later in the city of his birth, Munich. He was decorated by both King Ludwig II, he of Neuschwanstein Castle fame, and the rather tragic Emperor Franz Joseph I of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (His reign wasn't tragic but his personal life was). From the former, Neustatter received the Bavarian Order of St. Michael and from the Emperor he was bestowed the Gold Cross of Merit.

Louis Ludwig Neustatter lived until the age of 70. He died in Tutzing on the shores of Lake Starnberg in 1899, where King Ludwig's body along with the body of a physician who had accompanied him on an ill fated walk, were found some 13 years earlier. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia he moved there in 1879:

"He next resided in Munich, removing in 1879 to Tutzing, which he was largely instrumental in making a place of popular resort. He was voted the freedom of the town in recognition of his efforts to improve and beautify it, he and his brother were the only resident Jews".

But back to the two ladies on the stone balcony. The Lady in White stands next to her sister at the top of an outdoor stone staircase. She is gesturing toward something unseeable by the viewer of the painting. The gazes of the sisters are fixed on whatever it is she is pointing out.

The Lady in Pink- her name was Fanny- is holding a closed ivory fan with fluffy feathers protruding from the top. My mother kept that fan, wrapped in old tissue paper, in the top drawer of an English campaign chest in her bedroom. Fannie's dress is a deep saturated pink, lighter where the sun strikes it. The bodice of the dress is fitted, rising from a deep V at narrow waist to a modestly low cut neckline that nevertheless exposes much of her shoulders. Filmy lace edges the neckline and short flutter sleeves, and a spray of white flowers decorates the center of it. She wears no jewelry- not so much as a ring- but the same type of flowers trail from the back of her head where her long hair is gathered. Beside her on the stone and leaning against the bench where she is seated is a lute.

The Lady in White stands close enough to her sister that their bodies are nearly touching in several places. She is clothed in a drift of satin and sheer lace. Her arms are partially covered by a matching lace shawl. Around her neck is a string of pearls that my mother wore from time to time. In her hair are two red flowers; camellias perhaps or roses.

The expression on both women's faces are similar; contemplative, dreamy and serene.

Despite the blue sky and sunlight and the white and pink dresses, the painting has always seemed visually dark to me, due, perhaps, to the dark trees which take up so much of the background.

All family histories have to start someplace and this painting seems as good a starting point as any for me to begin mine.

Some branches of the maternal side of my family are easily traced. They were well off, they achieved some degree of success in the societies they lived in. It's a bit confusing because cousins had a habit of marrying cousins. My maternal grandparents were 2nd cousins. On the other hand, they were German Jews which means that a lot of historical records have been violently erased.

Unless we know our direct ancestors and their siblings and other relations through letters, journals or diaries, we can only guess what they would have thought about anything. I imagine that it would have shocked Neustatter that he with his honors from German and Austrian royalty would have been consigned to ovens of Auschwitz which burned so steadily some 43 years after his own death in the peaceful welcoming town of Tutzing on the shores of Lake Starnberg.