Carl Ferdinand Stelzner

Carl Ferdinand Stelzner made crisp, direct portraits of Hamburg’s mid-19th-century elite, crisp collars and all. The face in Self-portrait (1830) locks eyes with you from a plain dark ground, while Ulrika Dahlman m. Camitz, Canoness wears her black habit like armor. Both works sit squarely in the Biedermeier tradition, where quiet detail trumped grand gestures. If you want to step inside one of these quiet Hamburg parlor moments, open Self-portrait next.