Haydn’s passport portrait is found in a US store
mainThe Joseph Haydn Privatstiftung Eisenstadt has acquired a portrait of the composer made in 1785, when he was a provincial kapellmeister on a visit to Vienna.
Five years later, with the death of his Eisenstadt patron, Haydn became a world traveller, settling for two long periods in London and earning continental acclaim.
The portrait, by Christian Ludwig Seehas, was found in a US antique store.
The portrait was his ticket to publicity.
Can you explain “ticket to publicity”?
How was it used in that regard?
Passports in that era were extremely big. One of the reasons people did not travel much. The smaller passports got, the more people began to travel.
Don’t think it had anything to do with better means of travel and increasing affluence at all?
Could you please explain … ? The image you used in this post is the same one that had long been on wikipedia, can be found easily multiple times in a google image search, and was for instance used on the cover of a book in 1982. So “The portrait, by Christian Ludwig Seehas, was found in a US antique store” refers to yet an entirely different image than the one you used here?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Haydn_Schlo%C3%9FLWL.jpg
The idea that Haydn was a provincial Kapellmeister in 1784 “on a visit to Vienna” seems to have been suggested by a hitherto undetected algorithm to a writer somewhat deficient in musical, or historical knowledge.