Provenance
1878 Submitted as a competition picture to the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts, Berlin | 1878 Grand State Prize for Painting | 05/07/1926 – 1963 loan to the Prussian State Library, Berlin | 1963 – 15/05/2008 deposited in the Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin | 15/05/2008 given back to the Akademie der Künste, Berlin
Franz Heynacher won the Grand State Prize of the Royal Prussian Academy of Arts in 1878 for the oil painting Achilles' Trauer um Patroklos. The Academy granted travel fellowships to Rome as part of the prize to selected young artists from the end of the 18th century. The fellows could complete three years of further training in Italy focusing on the art of Antiquity and the Renaissance under the direction of German artists based there.
Many of the small format draft pictures created during the competition process, as well as the award-winning works, so-called competition pictures, were acquired by the Academy and used for study purposes. This is how Heynacher's work found its way into the collection. The historical archival holdings of the Akademie der Künste document Heynacher's participation in the competition and list his competitors. The work is also listed in an inventory transcription of the paintings and watercolours of the Academy of the Arts dating from 1907 under Number 286. Further research of in-house archives revealed that the painting was stored at the Academy until 1926. It then left the institution for a long time. Existing correspondence and receipts in the archive dating from 1926 document a loan to the General Director of the Prussian State Library in Berlin, Dr Hugo Andres Krüß. From then on, Heynacher's Achilles' Trauer um Patroklos, along with Oscar Begas' painting Der Untergang Pompejis (1852), which is also in the art collection of the Akademie der Künste, adorned the walls of the Library Director's official residence. Consequently, the competition picture was not relocated with the holdings of the Academy collection during the Second World War.
In 1963, according to an official letter, the State Library initially intended to give the painting back to the Academy. However, the little note saying "Release to State Museums" below the letter and a label on the back of the work make it clear that it was passed on to the State Museums in Berlin. The picture, which was in the care of the Alte Nationalgalerie, only returned to the Akademie 45 years later – on 15 May 2008. The painting was so severely damaged by the impact of war and storage that it remains in the depot to this day.