839 - O. Mucha, Erich Ludendorff, portrait watercolour of the commander with Pour le Merite, 1921

O. Mucha, Erich Ludendorff, portrait watercolour of the commander with Pour le Merite, 1921 Watercolour/paper, signed 'Mucha' and dated 1921 at centre right. Bust portrait of Erich Ludendorff in an oval surround against a grey ground, the face turned frontally towards the viewer. High forehead with receding hairline and a short fair moustache. He wears a field-grey tunic with red, gold-embroidered collar patches, red piping and gold shoulder boards; at his throat the order Pour le Merite, in the buttonhole the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross. Age-appropriate good condition, upper edge stained. Image 27.5 x 22.5 cm (HxW). Mount, behind glass, framed, frame bumped, overall 41 x 34 cm (HxW). From August 1916 Erich Ludendorff, as First Quartermaster General, was the actually decisive mind of the Third Supreme Army Command, while Paul von Hindenburg remained his formal superior. After 1918 he came forward publicly as a spokesman of the stab-in-the-back legend, while the Hindenburg myth continued to work. Portraits of both commanders were distributed in large numbers as prints and single sheets in the years after the First World War; the present watercolour survives as a pendant to a portrait of Hindenburg by the same hand.