- Titles François, Baron de Halleberg (Proper)
- Artist Anton Raphael Mengs, German, 1728 - 1779
- Medium oil on canvas
- Dimensions 39 1/8 x 29 1/4 in. (99.4 x 74.3 cm) frame: 47 1/4 × 37 1/2 × 3 in. (120 × 95.3 × 7.6 cm)
- Credit Line Museum purchase with funds provided by Corporate Members: Motion Industries; Sterne, Agee and Leach, Inc.; Camp & Company; CLP Corporation; Engel Realty Company; AMI Brookwood; Bradley, Arant, Rose and White; Automatic Detection Systems; Kidd, Plosser, Sprague Architects; Patrick Media Group, Inc.; and Altec Industries, Inc., 1988.44
- Work Type painting
- Classification Paintings
- On View
- Provenance Purchased in France, 1926; Private Collection, Millburn, New Jersey (1926-1987); consigned to dealer Richard J. Collins, New York [see note 1]; auctioned at Old Master Paintings, Sotheby’s, New York, June 3, 1988, lot 122 [see note 2]; purchased by Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, 1988
1. According to a September 7, 1989 memo from Leslie Blake DiNella, Assistant Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Richard Collins identified the sitter based on his orders and consulting Les Ordres du Roi by Ludovi Etienne Colleville for the 1740s, the initial dating of the painting according to Mengs expert Steffi Röttgen. In a January 13, 1989 letter to Douglas Hyland, Director, Röttgen suggested 1758-1760 as a more appropriate date “for stylistic reasons.” See object file.
2. Sold as “Portrait of a Gentleman, Said to be François, Baron de Halleberg, Chamberlain of the Elector Palatine, Wearing the Order of St. Lazare and the Maltese Cross.”