800 - Ludwig Gedlek, scout and group of riders in a wide landscape, oil on canvas, Vienna

Ludwig Gedlek, scout and group of riders in a wide landscape, oil on canvas, Vienna (1847 Kraków – 1904 Vienna), oil on canvas, signed 'L. Gedlek' lower right and inscribed with the place 'Wien', lettered 'L. GEDLEK' on a brass plaque on the frame. In a vast, spring-bare plain, a scout lies prone in the grass in the right foreground, watching a group of horsemen pass by in the middle ground through the bushes. In the left foreground, his own armed cavalry troop waits behind a dense cluster of trees, their horses restless. To the right, the view opens up over flat pastureland that gives way to wooded areas in the distance, beyond a river. Age-appropriate good condition, varnish yellowed, slightly soiled. Image 42 x 68 cm (HxW), framed in a gilt-coloured ornamental frame with a rocaille cartouche, frame slightly bumped, frame width 7 cm Ludwig Gedlek studied from 1861 to 1872 at the Academy of Art in Kraków and went in 1873 on a scholarship to the Vienna Academy to Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels and Carl Wurzinger. Even after moving to Vienna he remained faithful to the subjects of his Polish homeland and painted almost exclusively scenes from the life of soldiers and peasants, in which horses almost always play the leading part – Cossack columns, sledge teams, scenes of rest and of marching. His pictures were sought after in the Vienna of around 1900 and are still traded regularly at Dorotheum, Hampel and Van Ham.