MUNICH.- The exhibition »Images of the Artist« covers a broad spectrum of artistic (self-)representation in the 19th century and traces the roots of those motifs which, to a great extent, still mould the picture we have of an artist to this day. Especially in the age of selfies, in which the establishment of an image of oneself in digital media and on social networks has become a much-discussed phenomenon, the question of an artist’s self-fashioning with its related visual and narrative strategies seems to be more current than ever before.

What is an artist? Time and again painters and sculptors have looked for an answer to this question through their works. The self-portrait is without doubt the genre of painting in which this examination can best be traced. However, not only (self-)portraiture addressed the subject of being an artist, but history paintings and studio views did so as well. With depictions of artists in Munich at the time of Ludwig I and pictures of artists in Impressionist Paris – from Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s fresco designs with artists’ portraits for the Neue Pinakothek to Édouard Manet’s portrait of Claude Monet working on his studio boat –, the exhibition highlights the motifs and stimuli for the depiction of artists in the 19th century.

The exhibition comprises some 50 works, the majority being paintings, but including sculptures and prints as well. Apart from well-known masterpieces from the museum, treasures from the depot will also be shown – some for the first time in more than 50 years.

Works by the sculptors Johann von Halbig and Johann Baptist Stiglmaier, for example, are reminiscent of those in Ludwig I’s former Hall of Busts (›Büstensaal‹) in the Neue Pinakothek, where a row of contemporary portraits of artists was displayed. Léon Brunin’s »Sculptor« has been restored specially for this exhibition, as has a copy of a portrait of Rembrandt made before 1712 – a painting that, way into the 19th century, was considered to be a work by the Old Master himself, serving as a point of reference in the field of artistic self-portraiture (in fact, even Gustave Courbet attempted to compete with this work).