87 - Woldemar Graf von Reichenbach (1845, Waltdorf – 1914, Wachwitz), Spring Awakening.

Woldemar Graf von Reichenbach (1845, Waltdorf – 1914, Wachwitz), Spring Awakening. Oil on canvas. (ca. 1890). Approx. 124 x 185 cm. Signed lower left and in the center; monogrammed twice on the reverse and labeled on a tag. We thank Claudia Maria Müller, Dresden, for her helpful information regarding the artist. Woldemar Graf von Reichenbach is considered one of the most distinctive figures in late 19th-century Dresden painting. Born in 1846 in Walddorf near the Neisse River, he received his artistic training at the Weimar Art School under Karl Gussow and Albert Brendel. After study and educational trips that took him to the Netherlands, England, and Italy, among other places, he settled in the Dresden area and lived in Wachwitz from the 1890s onward. His body of work defies clear stylistic classification. Contemporary critics particularly highlighted the unusual combination of meticulous painterly execution, bold color, and a pronounced sense of the fantastical and the grotesque. Reichenbach created landscapes, interiors, still lifes, and genre scenes, as well as mythological and literarily inspired compositions. Particularly characteristic is that unique visual world, as seen in “Spring Awakening,” which a contemporary critic described as “humorous and fantastical.” The finely detailed painting style, executed with a fine brush, creates a deliberate tension with the often grotesquely exaggerated figures and situations. In our painting, a vast landscape with ruins serves as the setting for an illustrious scene featuring satyrs, centaurs, fairies, and mermaids heralding the awakening of spring. It is precisely from this combination of Old Master-like attention to detail and whimsical inventiveness that he develops his unmistakable artistic style. Reichenbach thus remained an independent outsider within the Dresden art scene: His works combine Romantic and late Biedermeier traditions with a pronounced penchant for the bizarre, the literary, and the fantastical. The fact that his works attracted attention in Dresden and at national art exhibitions even during his lifetime is evidenced by his continuous presence in the exhibition scene of that time. Exhibition: Second Munich Annual Exhibition at the Glaspalast, Munich 1890, Cat. No. 1023. Provenance: Private collection, Hesse. Taxation: subject to margin scheme (VAT: Margin Scheme).