The Battle Painter August Querfurt

The sitter turns to face us with a palette in one hand and a fine brush in the other, a bundle of spare brushes gripped against the palette. He wears a fur-lined green coat with gold embroidery and a soft cap of red and black. He is August Querfurt, a painter of battles and cavalry from Wolfenbüttel in northern Germany, recorded in Vienna from 1743. The Belvedere dates the canvas to 1752, with a question mark. That is also the year Querfurt was made an honorary member of the city's Academy of art, though the museum's record draws no link between the two. Franz Sebald Unterberger left the portrait unsigned. It reached the Belvedere in 1922 from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, when Vienna's state collections were reshuffled after the fall of the monarchy and Austrian Baroque painting was gathered in one place.