On the auction in Sotheby’s in London the Fryderyk Chopin Museum bought the unknown version of Chopin’s posthumous portrait. The painting was made by Albert Graefle – a German painter, the Parisian coworker of Franz Xaver Wizterhalter, author of portraits of French aristocracy and the members of the British Royal Family.

The exhibit has not been listed in the literature before. It constitutes a more elaborated version of a very well known portrait Chopin na łożu śmierci [Chopin on the deathbed] and it is one of several Chopin’s posthumous portraits made by Graefle.  This version differs in details from the pencil drawing bought by the Chopin Museum many years earlier and currently exhibited in the new Chopin Museum in the room „Death”.

This new exhibit is marked, on the reverse, with an annotation: A Graefle fait d’après nature, 19 Oct 1849. There is no additional signature but it has an autograph inscription: Chopin on it.

Previous owner remains unknown,  but the Sotheby’s auction house informed that the painting was hold by one family for over 100 years.