FRANZ BENDA, VIOLINIST AND COMPOSER - ENGRAVED BY F M SCHUSTER AFTER FALBE.

A fine and rare mid eighteenth century musical mezzotint of the celebrated violinist and composer Franz Brenda. The elegant sitter is pictured half length tuning his violin. He wears a powdered wig, and a frock coat with elaborate frogging. This highly decorative work on paper is in an excellent state of conservation and is ready to hang in its original 18th century ebonised frame.

Franz Benda (1709-1786 Potsdam) was a violinist and composer who worked for much of his life at the court of Frederick the Great.

Benda was born in Old Benatek in Bohemia, the son of Jan Jiří Benda. His brother was the composer Georg Benda. Benda's daughter Juliane Reichardt (1752–1783) and his granddaughter Louise Reichardt (1779–1826) were also composers. Benda wrote his autobiography in 1763 it not only gives a detailed account of his own life but also a valuable record of the lives of other musicians whom he encountered during his career.

In his youth Benda was a chorister in Prague and afterward in the Chapel Royal at Dresden. At the same time he began to study the violin, and soon joined a company of strolling musicians who attended fetes, fairs, etc. At eighteen years of age Benda abandoned this wandering life and returned to Prague, going to Vienna, where he pursued his study of the violin under Johann Gottlieb Graun, a pupil of Tartini. After two years he was appointed chapel master at Warsaw. In 1732, he entered the service of Frederick the Great, then crown prince of Prussia, with whom he remained the rest of his life. He was a member of the crown prince's orchestra, and later became concertmaster to the king. He played about 50,000 concertos over a period of forty years.[2] At Benda's request, Frederick allowed his parents and siblings to move to Potsdam when, as Protestants, they suffered religious persecution in Bohemia.

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Date: 1756

Mezzotint.     

Framed: 32 cm x 47cm / 12.5 in. x 18.5in.                                                                                                

Price: £580