Portrait of Joseph Löwenstein (ca. 1780–1856)

The subject of this portrait was UW-Madison professor George Mosse’s great-grandfather. The painting retains its original stretcher and gilded cavetto-type frame, with an inscription attached, hand-written by George’s great aunt Aline Bensheimer, noting that “this picture represents my grandfather Löwenstein, who died on October 26, 1856, at the age of seventy six.” Bensheimer documents that the portrait was in the possession of her parents and came to her after their death and states merely that it was “painted by Achenbach” without giving the artist’s proper name.