Portrait of an Officer in Uniform, Lithograph by Hornemann, 1850

This large lithographed portrait shows an unnamed officer at half length, facing the viewer, in a single breasted dark tunic with a high stand collar, a row of bright buttons and heavy fringed epaulettes. He has dark hair brushed back from a high forehead, a full mustache and a small tuft of beard below the lip, and his right hand, with a signet ring on the little finger, rests at his waist.

The portrait is signed in the stone at lower left, below the hand, "Hornemann" with the date "1850". There is no title, no name of the sitter and no printer's line. The signature points to the Hanover portrait lithographer Friedrich Adolph Hornemann (1813 to 1890), who drew many of the officers, officials and citizens of that kingdom in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the uniform is of the German pattern of the years around 1850.

Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Munich in 1796, and within a generation it had become the favorite medium for the portrait print across the German speaking lands. The artist drew directly on the stone with a greasy crayon, so a lithographed portrait keeps the softness and immediacy of a chalk drawing. Here the face is built up in fine, even tone, the tunic in deeper shading, and the background is left as a loose vignette of crayon strokes around the figure, with a pale gray tint stone giving the image a soft ground.

Portraits like this were often commissioned privately, for an officer's family and comrades, and printed in small numbers. Where no name is attached they are collected for the quality of the drawing and the character of the face, and this one, with its direct gaze and confident pose, would make a strong picture for a study, a hallway or a collection of military portraits.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.