649 - Georg Fischinger, Two Children in the Forest (Hansel & Gretel), oil painting c. 1900, in its original ornate frame

Georg Fischinger, Two Children in the Forest (Hansel & Gretel), oil painting c. 1900, in its original ornate frame Georg Fischinger, 1859 - Salzburg - 1944, Austrian genre and landscape painter; here: Two Children in the Forest (Hansel and Gretel) have hidden behind a shed in the forest and are watching a stooped man, possibly their father the woodcutter, who abandoned them at the insistence of their stepmother and is now searching for them remorsefully; oil on canvas, 45 x 36 cm, age-related craquelure, minimal loss of colour at the lower edge, signed on the left, in the original ornate stucco frame About the artist: Georg Fischinger preferred to paint scenes set deep in the forest, by still waters or amongst groups of trees; in this respect, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ - one of the world’s best-known German folk tales, made famous by the Brothers Grimm’s collection - was a most fitting subject. Precisely because Fischinger’s interpretation makes no reference to the central elements of the narrative (pebbles, breadcrumbs, fingers/bones), the depiction offered here captivates with its artistic freedom, making it a distinct and unique work within the 19th-century of the 19th century.