Anton Graff (1736 Winterthur - 1813 Dresden) Oval portrait of Marie Madeleine (Magdalene) Platzmann, née Lautier Graff, who is regarded as the creator of bourgeois portraits of women and men in Germany, depicts Marie Madeleine Platzmann in a spotted white and pink silk coat and with a delicate white chiffon scarf loosely knotted at her neck and draped over her grey powdered hair. Graff's mastery of giving artistic expression to the character of a person in his portraits is also evident in this portrait, painted around 1775. He created it with softly modelling light against a dark, neutral background, with highly subtle nuances in the colouring. Graff has rendered the fabrics with virtuosity, but his real focus is on the expression of the gentle face as she responds to us with an open gaze, sparkling, lively eyes and a slightly implied smile, creating an intimate, dialogue-like relationship with the viewer. The sitter was a daughter of the Berlin court jeweller Pierre Lautier and married the Berlin silk manufacturer Jean (Johannes) Platzmann (1720 - 1770) in 1752, after his death she married the Prussian privy councillor Pierre Vigne in a second marriage. This meant that she continued to belong to high society, so there was hardly anyone better suited to have her portrait painted than Graff. He often travelled to Berlin to execute portraits (and to visit his father-in-law Johann Georg Sulzer). The present painting thus shows her as an approximately 45-year-old lady. The present, previously unpublished painting is probably one of the three versions Graff painted himself for Platzmann's children. One version is in the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (inv. no. 767), a second version is in the museum in Chemnitz and this third version was privately owned in Winterthur. Professor Helmut Börsch-Supan writes: "Because of its outstanding quality, I believe it to be a work by Graff himself. In the lightness of its handling, it even seems to me to be superior to the Brunswick copy". The sitter and Anton Graff as the creator of the painting can also be identified by an old sticky note in French on the reverse of the original stretcher: "Marie Magdalaine Platzmann (/...) à Berlin le 6 Decem(bre) 1752. morte le 8 Dec:(embre) 1790. (/) La mère de Henry Charles P:(latzmann/) a épousée apres de son (...) second mariage (...) Pierre Vigne peint par Graf la père". 76.5 cm x 63 cm, in oval. Frame. Enclosed: Expertise by Prof. Dr. Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, 26.02.2024. Cf. Ekhart Berckenhagen: "Anton Graff. Life and Work", Berlin 1967, no. 1085-86. Oil on canvas, relined. Old label with information about the sitter and painter on the reverse. Accompanied by an expertise from Professor Dr. Helmut Börsch-Supan, Berlin, 24th of February 2024.