1905
Portrait of Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (1895-1903)
Posthumous portrait depicting Princess Elisabeth of Hesse in 1902.
Painted by German painter Hans Weyl (1863-1916) in 1905.
source: unknown.
1903
Portrait of Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (1895-1903)
Portrait of Princess Elisabeth of Hesse by Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1850-1920).
Dated, November 1903.
Pastel on cardboard. Height: 46 cm. Width: 32 cm.
The pastel portrait of Elisabeth was created shortly before her death in November 1903 during a stay of the Munich painter Friedrich August von Kaulbach in Darmstadt. He portrayed the children of the Tsarist couple (Elisabeth’s cousins) on October 30th and Elisabeth on November 6th.
He had been a guest in Darmstadt several times since 1892 to portray the princesses there and their children. “He was a well-educated person and unbelievably modest for his fame. People loved him everywhere because of his elegant, quiet manner. But he had a lot of humor, and his caricatures were extremely comical,” Ernst Ludwig described him in his memoirs.
Elisabeth’s pastel, which was created shortly before she left for Russia, was apparently only completed after her death, because the painter added a poem by Ludwig Ihland (1787-1862) to the portrait. It is called “On the death of a child” and does not originate from Ferdinand Freiligrath, whom Kaulbach erroneously stated as its author.
The poem can be translated into English as:
“You came You went with silent trace, a fleeting guest in Earth’s Land. Where from ? Where to? All we know is: from God’s hand in God’s hand”.
sources: Fürsten Kinder, Porträts von 16. bis 21 Jh. im Hause Hessen.
Portrait of Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (1904) and the photograph in which it was based (1902).