<b>Adolph Menzel</b>
(1815–1905)
 

Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel was a German Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings. Along with Caspar David Friedrich, he is considered one of the two most prominent German painters of the 19th century, and was the most successful artist of his era in Germany. First known as Adolph Menzel, he was knighted in 1898 and changed his name to Adolph von Menzel. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Menzel

Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci
1852
Oil on canvas
142x 205 cm
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin
https://recherche.smb.museum/detail/966477/fl%C3%B6tenkonzert-friedrichs-des-gro%C3%9Fen-in-sanssouci

The painting depicts, in a pre-impressionistic, painterly 19th-century style, an 18th-century musical soirée at the palace at which a piece of music is being played with King Frederick himself playing the flute center stage. However, the monarch’s features represented in the painting are highly idealized as Menzel avoids showing Frederick with his aquiline nose, although he must have known the death mask of the Prussian king.
In front of Frederick sits his chamber ensemble and to his rear an audience of dignitaries and noble ladies. The focus of the work is not on the music but rather on Frederick and the ambience created by the interior design, the furniture, the chandelier and candlelight and the ladies' elaborate dresses.