The Music Room of Fanny Hensel

This watercolor was made two years after the death of Fanny Hensel, the pianist, composer, and elder sister of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and must have been commissioned as a memorial tribute. The room depicted is the music room of the Hensel residence at Leipzigerstrasse 3 in Berlin — the historic Mendelssohn family home — where Fanny had presided over the celebrated Sonntagsmusiken, Sunday morning musical gatherings that drew performers and intellectuals from across Berlin's cultural world. Fanny began hosting these salons in earnest around 1831 and continued until her sudden death from a stroke on 14 May 1847, composing, programming, conducting, and performing at each one. Despite producing more than 450 works — lieder, piano pieces, chamber music, and choral cantatas — she published almost nothing in her lifetime, discouraged in part by her brother Felix, who felt that public performance and publication were incompatible with her role as a wife and mother. Felix Mendelssohn died six months after his sister, and their deaths, following one upon the other, ended the most remarkable musical partnership in the Mendelssohn family. The drawing was acquired by the collector Eugene V. Thaw at Villa Grisebach, Berlin, and given to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in 2007 as part of the Thaw Collection.