802 - G. Winkelmann, belling stag with herd in a mountain landscape, animal piece, dated 1892

G. Winkelmann, belling stag with herd in a mountain landscape, animal piece, dated 1892 Oil/canvas, signed 'G. Winkelmann' and dated 1892 lower left. On a rocky rise overgrown with heather and fern stands a mature red stag with widely spreading antlers, belling with open mouth. Behind him stand two hinds, in the foreground a second antlered stag lies among stones and grass. At the lower left two further red deer cross a sunlit clearing, behind them a wooded slope and in the distance a mountain range tiered in blue. The sky in pale blue with light clouds and a reddish shimmer on the horizon. Age-appropriate condition, backed and retouched passage at upper right, craquelure, rubbed areas with loss of paint. Image 40.5 x 60.5 cm (HxW). Framed in a gilt decorative frame with ornamental moulding, frame bumped, frame width 8.5 cm. The belling stag was the most successful pictorial motif of the German Empire. Following the example of the Dusseldorf animal painters around Carl Friedrich Deiker and Christian Kroener, an entire genre emerged from the 1870s showing red deer in wide mountain and heath landscapes. Such pictures hung in hunting rooms and studies, in inns and forester's houses; their distribution as oleographs made the motif the epitome of middle-class wall decoration well into the 20th century. With its careful drawing of the antlers and its tiered construction of the landscape, the present work is a characteristic example of this pictorial tradition.