Painted portrait of Frédéric Chopin in his last years, chin-length dark hair, black cravat and heavy overcoat, against a lavender grey ground

Portraits · Composers · VIII of XVII

Frédéric Chopin

1810–1849 · Composer and pianist

After exhausting every difficulty, after playing an immense quantity of notes, and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges with all its charm, as the final seal of art.

Après avoir épuisé toutes les difficultés, après avoir joué une immense quantité de notes, et de notes, c'est la simplicité qui sort avec tout son charme, comme le dernier sceau de l'art.

Frédéric Chopin · as recorded by his pupil Friederike Müller, 1840 · our translation
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In April 1840 Chopin was too unwell to hear Liszt play at Érard's in Paris. The next morning his pupil Friederike Müller described the concert to him, and he answered with this.

She kept his words, in his French, in her diary. They were printed in 1888.

Said to his pupil Friederike Müller (later Mme Streicher) on the morning after Liszt's matinée at Érard's, Paris, 20 April 1840. Her recollections, 'based on extracts from her carefully-kept diary of the years 1839, 1840, and 1841', in Frederick Niecks, Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician, 2 vols (London: Novello, Ewer & Co., 1888), vol. II, Appendix III, p. 338.

The originals

Photograph of Frédéric Chopin about 1849, seated in a heavy overcoat and black cravat, looking at the camera
The likenessPHOTOGRAPHED BY LOUIS-AUGUSTE BISSON · C. 1849Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (daguerreotype of the 1840s; Bisson died 1876). Scan credited to the Musée de la Musique, Paris, via Wikimedia Commons (same photograph as the bank's Frederic_Chopin_photo.jpeg, larger file). Often dated c. 1847.
A handwritten page of piano music marked Maestoso, dense with dark ink, the title and dedication written across the top
Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53, 1842His Polonaise in A-flat, Op. 53, written in 1842. The heading names the dedicatee, Auguste Léo, and his publishers in Leipzig, Paris and London.Autograph, Polonaise Op. 53, 1842. The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Heineman Collection. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.