RKD STUDIES

Since Gerson’s publication, some of Seybold’s works, mainly self-portraits, have been published in monographic essays by the curators Klára Garas (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) and Harald Marx (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden), as well as in extensive catalogue entries by Elfriede Baum (Unteres Belvedere, Vienna). These publications arose out of research conducted on the occasion of the bicentenary of Empress Maria Theresa’s death in 1980.¹ It was not until this century that further research on Seybold was published. Seybold was not born in Mainz in 1697, but, in fact, in Neuenhain, near Mainz, in 1695.² The earliest mention of Seybold can be found in Viennese sources from 1715, when he married his first wife Elisabeth (1688-1717). Despite the fact that Hagedorn also wrote that Seybold was born in Mainz, and that the painter was registered in the Viennese marriage records as ‘gebürtig aus Mainz’ (born in Mainz), the information regarding his alleged birth in Mainz cannot be debunked solely on the basis of the baptismal entry in the Neuenhain register.³ The second reason for questioning Mainz as being Seybold’s place of birth is that ‘gebürtig’ in combination with ‘aus Mainz’ should be interpreted as him staying more than ten years in the city in question, rather than actually being born there.⁴ It is therefore conceivable that Seybold completed his apprenticeship in Mainz before he moved to Vienna.

So far, nothing is known about Seybold’s education. The oft-repeated assumption that he was self-taught is most likely based on an interpretation of Hagedorn’s text: ‘Il n’eut d’autre Maître que son génie’, which is a commonplace in painters’ biographies, and should therefore not be taken literally as implying that the master served no apprenticeship. From 1715 onwards, documentary proof of Seybold’s career and his family life can be traced uninterruptedly in Vienna until his death, except for two intervals, from the end of October 1721 to the beginning of June 1730, and the period from mid-1745 to July 1749, when his name is absent from Viennese sources. Between 1715 and 1742 he fathered 11 children, ten with his second wife Susanna (1700-1772), whom he married in 1718. Only two of his children outlived their parents: Jacob (1719-1775), who became a priest, and Francisca (1721-1772), who never married. Before 1731 he was referred to in the church registers as ‘Mahler’, from that year also as ‘Akademie-Mahler’, from 1732 as ‘Cammer-Mahler’, and in another source from 1736 as ‘pictor aulicus’. Although these court titles had protected status, they did not guarantee constant commissions, payments or other benefits. This changed in 1745, when Seybold was officially appointed court painter by decree to the Dresden court of Friedrich August II (1696-1763). This honour, which came with remunerations and privileges, was also bestowed upon him at the Viennese court of Maria Theresa (1717-1780) and Franz I Stephan von Lothringen (1708-1765) in 1749.

At present, Seybold’s body of works numbers approximately 130 original compositions, not counting replicas, copies and (often practically identical) variants. The largest part consists of tronies and self-portraits, while only a few commissioned portraits are known. Equally few and far between are instances of works whose earliest provenance can be ascertained with reasonable certainty; only in rare cases can a relationship with a customer or client be substantiated. Seybold’s stylistic versatility is perpetuated in his self-portraits, which show that he often worked simultaneously in different styles and continued to vary over time. The fact that he rarely signed or dated his works makes it difficult to establish a chronology within his artistic development or to assign particular works to a fixed period.