Richard Wagner and Friends in Bayrueth (c. 1880)
by
Georg Papperitz
Papperitz (1846 - 1918) was a German painter, the son of the landscape painter Gustav Friedrich Papperitz. Papperitz the younger specialized in portraiture, although he also worked in other genres.
The painting above (sorry, can't find a color version, though there's a colored engraving below) shows the German composers Richard Wagner (with the book in his lap) and Franz Liszt (at the piano), along with a number of other individuals and, most importantly, Wagner's Newfoundland dog, Russmuck. Bayreuth is the German town where King Ludwig of Bavaria, who loved Wagner's operas, built an opera house (completed in 1876), to Wagner's specifications, just for the presentation of Wagner's operas. It is the site of an annual Wagner festival that continues to this day.
Wagner owned at least two Newfoundlands during his life, and his love of his Newfs inspired a contemporary sculptor to create dozens of statues of Wagner's Newfoundland Russmuck. Read about it here at the Cultured Newf.
