Beethoven auf dem Sterbebett - Zeichnung von Josef Teltscher vom März 1827, Fotografie, um 1920

As can be gathered from various sources, Josef Teltscher visited Beethoven several times in March 1827 and sketched the composer. He was almost certainly in the dying man's living room on the afternoon of the 26 March, as Anselm Hüttenbrenner and Johann Baptist Jenger testify. The way Beethoven is portrayed suggests that he was still alive when Teltscher produced the drawing, although he seems to have lost consciousness at this point.

The Beethoven scholar Theodor Frimmel, who devoted a great deal of time in the nineteenth century to studying various portraits of the composer, emphasized the "convincing likeness" in Teltscher's drawing, which he considered to be a well-executed and successful representation (FRIMMEL 1909, S. 58).(S.B.)