Theodor Baierl (German, 1881-1932), active in
Munich
St John the Baptist
circa 1920’s
signed lower
right 'Theodor Baierl'
oil on panel
with cradle stretcher in original Aedicula gilt frame with Renaissance style
decoration, and label verso
80 x
39cm
Conserved by Andrea Rothe (formerly, Getty Museum) and Jeanne McKee-Rothe (formerly, Norton Simon Museum).
Provenance:
The Reverend
Francis Swithinbank, Vicar of Clare, Suffolk [he was vicar from 1931 to 1962], who
obtained the painting from a fellow clergyman during a visit to Munich [in the
late 1930’s or 1940’s], and subsequent descent within the family after his
death in 1962. For more than 60 years, in the Swithinbank family.
2008 Cheffins, Cambridge, UK
Exhibitions:
1930 'Muenchener Kunstausstellung im Glaspalast,'
Munich Art Exhibition, Crystal Palace, Munich (old exhibition label on the
reverse)
1937 Teodoro
Baierl, retrospective exhibition at the Palacio das Janelas Verdes (the
National Museum of Art), Lisbon. Reverend
Francis seems to have acquired the painting sometime after the 1937 exhibition.
Literature:
1937 José de Figueiredo, Catálogo da Exposição de Pintura e Desenho de Teodoro Baierl (Lisbon:
Palacio das Janelas Verdes, 1937), cat. no. 16.
The little-known, eccentric Munich painter Theodor Baierl
(1881-1932) had an anachronistic painting style that revealed the influence of the
Quattrocento, Italian art of the 15th century. But his singular paintings are often assigned
to the Symbolist movement.
Baierl depicts John as a somewhat androgynous , adolescent
young man in the wilderness, wearing only an animal-skin loincloth and tenderly
cradling a lamb (his iconographic attribute), with a long thin staff-cross
resting in the crook of his right arm.
But perhaps the most remarkable feature of this unique icon is John’s
wild, rock-star hair!
Baierl himself designed a custom frame for his “Young John the
Baptist.” And the painting was exhibited at the Crystal
Palace art exhibition in Munich in 1930 (Muenchener Kunstausstellung im Glaspalast); and again, after
Baierl’s death, in a monographic retrospective exhibition at the National Museum in Lisbon in 1937.
In the Daulton
Collection, there are six paintings by Baierl, including
another, smaller, less-finished version of “Young John the Baptist,” perhaps a study.
-- Jack Daulton, 2019
