ANONYMOUS ARTIST, after &
FRIEDEL (Adam de).
Ink and watercolour copy of Notis (Constantine) Botzaris, after a lithograph by Adam de Friedel.
An attractive albeit slightly naive copy of a lithograph from Adam de Friedel’s series of Greek Revolution portraits (published in London and Paris, 1827-29), showing Notis Botzaris, a Captain of the Souliotes.
“There is some confusion as to Friedel’s origins. He is supposed to be a Danish philhellene and was apparently passing himself off as a baron. St. Clair tells us that Friedel carried a lithographic press on his back though Greece, that he was at Missolonghi for a while with Byron, and that he married the sister of John Hodges, one of Byron’s artificers. A letter from Byron introducing Friedel to the notice of the London Greek Committee is known. Whatever the actual facts, Friedel seems to have been in Greece from about 1821 to mid-1824. He settled in England, and his first lithograph (Mavrocordato) appears with the date September, 1824” (Blackmer, 633).
