1165 - SPITZWEG, CARL

SPITZWEG, CARL 1808 Munich–1885 Munich Title: The Cactus Lover. Date: 1850-1860. Technique: Oil on panel. Measurement: 30.5 x 23.5cm. Notation: Signed lower right: S in the rhombus. Frame: Framed. Carl Spitzweg was born into a merchant family from Munich and enjoyed a sheltered childhood. All life long, he stayed true to his home town; here he learnt to be an apothecary and studied pharmacy, chemistry and botany. Having gained his financial independence through inheritance, the 25-year-old Spitzweg decided to follow his passion and deidctaed his life to painting from then on. He set himself a deadline of 15 years to experience artisthood and assert himself. Should he remain without success, he planned to return to his being as an apothecary. A firend circle of different painters, especially Eduard Schleich the Elder, gave valuable pieces of advice to the self-taught artist and encouraged his decision. And quickly his success arrived: Spitzweg's smalll-scale works whose audience was the new bourgeois class of buyers were soon well-sold. The extremely diligent painter, however, also was a mind who travelled frequently and was open to the innovations of the (artistic) world. During his innumerable travels and hikes with his artist friends he collected his impressions of Bavaria, the alpine region, Northern Italy or even Dalmatia. One journey that had a long-lasting influence on his artistic work led Carl Spitzweg with his brother and Eduard Schleich the Elder first to Paris in 1851 and from there to the first world exhibition in London. In Paris Spitzweg contacted the artists of the Barbizon School who he visited at the Fontainebleau forest. The unmediated painting in the landscape, the consequent new handling of light and shadows, the non-linear artistic handling of paint and the stage-like construction of landscapes, too, as the group around Théodore Rousseau, Camille Corot and Charles Francois Daubigny practiced it - all of this impressed and fascinated Spitzweg. The subsequent confrontation with William Turner's works in London led his painting even further into the same direction. 'The Cactus Lover', lot 1165, is one of Carl Spitzweg's probably most popular motifs after the 'Poor Poet'. On old man clad in a robe has stepped out of his house into the morning sun. Closely to his eyes he holds a pot with a cactus whose buds he admires. He appears to be talking to the prickly plant. Other examples of tits kind are assembled on a parapet. They proof their owner as an expert of their exotic species. Carl Spitzweg, this master of psychological typing presents the 'Cactus Lover' as a relatively small figure in a rather wide space: Behind the not wholly tidy place at the house corner dark trees are rising, in front of whom the sun-lit scenery comes esepcially well into its own. Affectionate humour resonates in the description of this figure concentrated on the exotic plant who is relatively small in comparison to the image space. With his friendly exploration of paintings of the humans and situation that are characteristic of him, Carl Spitzweg has significantly shaped the general idea of the Biedermeier era and is, apart from Caspar David Friedrich, likely the most popular German visual artist of the 19th century. The present version of the 'Cactus Lover' is not listed at the 2002 catalogue raisonné by Siegfried Wiechmann, yet, it has been presented to the Spitzweg expert Detlef Rosenberger in the original and has been evaluated as an authentic work. He dated the painting to the period from 1850 to 1860. We are grateful to Detlev Rosenberger, Oberostendorf, who has confirmed the attribution of the painting in the original. The work will be registered by him in the digital catallogue raisonné of Spitzweg's paintings. Provenance: - Private ownership, Germany Estimated shipping costs for this lot: The lot is unsuitable for parcel shipping. Transport only by shipping company after consultation following the auction. additional shipping insurance Shipping insurance up to total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: max. 41.65 Euro over a total invoice amount of 25,000 Euros: 1.8 o/oo USA by individual arrangement after the auction. #Carl Spitzweg #Munich School #Biedermeier #Germany #19th C. #Caricature #Plants #Paintings.