The Skittles Club – Ten Portraits of Artists

In June 1860 Franz von Lenbach, then 23, was appointed a professor at the new art school the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar had founded in Weimar, alongside the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin. There he and Böcklin, later joined by the sculptor Reinhold Begas, met to make portrait studies together, and Lenbach worked out a way of painting people that put the individual face first, ahead of costume, props and the trappings of rank. In April 1862 he resigned at his own request. Looking back, he said he had realised he must first learn rather than teach, and that he longed for Italy. This canvas is dated to that same year. Its title calls it a skittles club, ten portraits of artists, and all ten heads share a canvas only 53 by 45 centimetres. The museum does not name the sitters, and among the things it records in the picture are hats and beards.