The Painter and his Family

Kremser Schmidt’s authentic portraits and the documents of his life unanimously prove this picture to represent the painter Schmidt with his family. The master is sitting in the foreground at his easel, with a brush in his right hand, in comfortable indoor clothes. In front of him can be seen his wife and their daughter. The painter is turning right, towards his two sons. The younger son, the painter Johann Karl Martin is holding a palette and a portrait of the deceased members of the family. The elder brother, Joseph Johann, whose head is painted on a canvas inserted subsequently in the painting, is sitting at right in the foreground, with a document in his hand. In the background a large painting is represented, Venus in the Workshop of Vulcanus, a lost work of Schmidt.

This family portrait is known to us in other versions. A larger variation in a Frohnleiten private collection, painted on copper (72,4 x 86,4 cm) includes the signature of Schmidt and the date 1790. Another version from Sternberk Castle Museum (Bohemia, today in Olomouc Krajsk� vlastv�dn� muzeum) shows only a fragmentany detail of the larger portrait with the self portrait of the painter. According to recent research, the Budapest painting was a sketch for the larger Frohnleiten group portrait, and one of the two pictures decorated the painter’s house in Stein, as in attested by his estate’s inventory.