Chalk Drawing of Felix Mendelssohn Sells for £34,000

The sketch, which is by Karl Joseph Begas, shows Mendelssohn at the age of twelve and was the basis for several other portraits

A chalk drawing of the composer Felix Mendelssohn has sold at auction for £34,000 — a figure that dramatically outstripped the work's estimated sale price of between £2,000 and £3,000.

The portrait, which shows the composer aged twelve, was done in black and white chalk on paper by the artist Karl Joseph Begas. It was a preliminary sketch for a larger portrait, with that painting being held by Berlin's Märkisches Museum until it was destroyed by a fire in 1945. The paper drawing has never been sold before, because it was passed directly down from Mendelssohn's family to the seller.

The drawing was auctioned in the Roseberys Old Master, British & European Pictures sale on Wednesday 12 March, and was ultimately purchased by a German buyer.

The work is a significant piece of art in that it also informed another oil sketch of Mendelssohn by Begas, which was given to Dr Johann Ludwig Caspar, the librettist for some of Mendelssohn's early childhood operas. It may have also informed the popular oval-shaped engraving by August Weger.

The drawing now carries the highest price tag of any of Begas's works, a record previously held by his portrait Fanny Elssler as La Sylphide. 

Around the same time as he made this drawing, Begas also painted Felix's sister, Fanny Mendelssohn — and this work is held in the collection of the Begas Haus Museum in Heinsberg. The curator Dr Wolfgang Cortjaens likens this painting to "a counterpart to her brother‘s lost portrait."