Portrait of Beethoven by Naum Lvovich Aronson, plaster print, signed L Aronson, located in Bonn and dated 1905.
Born in 1872 in Kreslau in the Russian Empire, today Kraslava in Latvia, he received a traditional Jewish upbringing. He took drawing lessons in Vilnius, then moved to Paris in 1891, where he enrolled at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and worked in the studios of Hector Lemaire and Auguste Rodin. He exhibited for the first time at the Salon du Champs de Mars in 1897 with his high relief "Au-delà". Settling in the Montarnasse district, he lived among the large Russian community then present in the capital. He won numerous other awards and commissions for portraits of famous contemporaries (Tolstoy, Rasputin).
Deeply influenced by Beethoven's music, he set about creating his bust, of which there are several versions.
The one presented here is the version now on display at the Beethoven House in Bonn, and is certainly the most famous.
