Note 11 — Chapter II

In the collection of Beethoven relics in the Beethoven House in Bonn there is a portrait which is set down as that of Beethoven’s mother. The designation, however, rests only on uncertain tradition and lacks authoritative attestation. It is certainly difficult to see in it the representation of a consumptive woman only 40 years old. Moreover, it is strange that Beethoven should have sent from Vienna for the portrait of his grandfather and not for that of his dearly loved mother had one been in existence. It is only because of a resemblance between this picture and another that the belief exists that portraits of both of the parents of Beethoven are in existence. In 1890 two oil portraits were found in a shed in Cologne and restored by the painter Kempen, who recognized in them the handiwork of the painter Beckenkamp, who, like Beethoven’s mother, was born in Ehrenbreitstein, was a visitor at the Beethoven home in Bonn and died in Cologne in 1828. The female portrait agrees with that in Bonn; they are life-size, finely executed pictures, but they are certainly not Beethoven’s parents. Enough has been said about the portrait of the mother. In the case of that of the father the first objection is that it also lacks authentication. Fischer’s description does not wholly fit the picture; the old man would not have forgotten the protruding lower lip. But the entire expression of the face, serious, it is true, but fleshy and vulgar, and the gray perruque, do not conform to what we know of the easy-going musician. It will be difficult, too, to trace any resemblance of expression between it and the familiar one of Beethoven from which a conclusion might be drawn. So long as proofs are wanting, scientific biography will have no right to accept the portraits as those of Beethoven’s parents. Reproductions of them may be found in the “Musical Times” of London, December 15, 1892.