824 - Fritz Bersch, Shepherds at Rest on the Alp, bearded shepherd and boy with goats, Alpine panorama

Fritz Bersch, Shepherds at Rest on the Alp, bearded shepherd and boy with goats, Alpine panorama (1873 – 1950), oil on panel, signed lower right “F. Bersch”, mountain landscape, an old bearded shepherd in a brown coat and with a dark hat sits on an alpine meadow holding binoculars in his hands, beside him a shepherd's crook, an umbrella and a small bag lie in the grass, he is accompanied by a boy in lederhosen with a long stick, on the left two white goats before the Alpine panorama, condition commensurate with age, retouching, craquelure, image 37.5x50 cm (HxW), framed, gold-coloured frame with shell and flower ornaments, frame chipped, frame width 8.5 cm The painting belongs to Alpine genre painting, which, alongside pure landscape, took the life of the mountain dwellers as its subject. The Alps attracted painters from the late 18th c., but the people in the mountains only came into the view of artists from the middle of the 19th c. Painters trained at the Munich Academy, which demanded naturalistic precision, such as Maximilian Wachsmuth painted alpine pasture scenes and farmhouse parlours after the model of Franz Defregger and Wilhelm Leibl. Idyllic depictions of this kind can also be read as a counter-image to the big city, industrialisation and alienation from nature.