Johan Renatus Lüderitz (1780-after 1829)
A pair of portraits of the German First Conductor at the opera in St. Petersburg and his wife

Signed and dated 'Lüderitz px 1830' (along the right edge) Gouache and watercolour on paper 19 x 14 cm (each) executed in 1830 Provenance: Acquired by Erica Zeiner-Henriksen 1922-1927 in St. Petersburg Thereafter was sold at Bruun Rasmussen auction as part of the Russian collection of the Norwegian commercial attaché Richard Zeiner-Henriksen. Richard Zeiner-Henriksen (1878-1965) lived in Russia during the first half of the 1900s and worked for both the oil company Nobel Brothers and The Norwegian General Consulate. In 1923, Zeiner-Henriksen and his family moved into an apartment in the Saltykov Palace, which at the end of the 1700s had been owned by Tsaritsa Catherine the Great and was later given to the Saltykov noble family. It was in these stately surroundings that Richard and Erica Zeiner-Henriksen began collecting Russian art and antiques. Their collection of icons, princely portraits, furniture, silver, glass and porcelain covers a large part of Russian history – from Ivan the Terrible in the 1500s over Tsaritsa Catherine the Great in the 1700s to the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, in the early 1900s. In 1931, Richard Zeiner-Henriksen moved back to Norway.