1360 - Franz von Defregger (1835 Stronach – 1921 Munich)

Franz von Defregger (1835 Stronach – 1921 Munich) End of the Workday A cheerful idyll featuring a young Tyrolean farming family. While the mother knits and the father smokes his pipe on a bench in front of the house, enjoying the end of the workday, their young son—exhausted from the day’s exertions and adventures—has already fallen asleep standing in his mother’s lap. The parents watch their child with visible contentment and happiness. With his vivid depictions of everyday farm life in Tyrol, portraits, and scenes of the Tyrolean peasant uprising, Franz von Defregger ranks among the most significant artists of the Munich School. As the son of a Tyrolean farmer, he was long prevented from pursuing an artistic career, despite his talent. After his father’s death, at the age of 23, he first had to take over his father’s farm in Stronach in East Tyrol. It was not until 1860 that he mustered the courage to sell the farm and begin artistic training in Innsbruck; he later moved to Munich and, from 1863 to 1865, to Paris. In 1865, Defregger returned to the Bavarian capital and, beginning in 1866, studied at the Academy and in the studio of Carl Theodor von Piloty in Munich. From the mid-1860s onward, he quickly gained a strong reputation; he exhibited not only in Munich but also in Berlin and Vienna, among other places, and his paintings became popular with the public. From Munich, Defregger regularly traveled twice a year for extended periods to Bolzano in Tyrol, where he also found the subjects for his paintings. From 1878 to 1910, Defregger taught at the Munich Academy himself. In addition to gold medals at exhibitions and the Prussian Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, he was granted a title of nobility in 1883. During the Prince Regent’s reign, Defregger rose, alongside other artistic giants such as Franz von Lenbach and Franz von Stuck, to join the select circle of the so-called “Munich Princes of Painting.” In 1906, however, Defregger’s work was also honored at the Centennial Exhibition of German Art in Berlin. Oil on canvas, doubled; painted and signed; 46.5 cm x 36 cm. Framed. Lit.: Auction “Oil Paintings by Modern Masters. Primarily from Private Collections in Munich,” Galerie Helbing, Munich, April 28, 1917, cat. no. 25 (“Feierabend”), ill. Plate VI. Cf./further literature (see also provenance): Hans Peter Defregger: “Franz von Defregger 1835–1921,” Rosenheim 1983, p. 382 (with ill.), which includes a version dated 1906. This work apparently also appeared under the title “Feierabend” as a color postcard published by E. A. Seemann, Leipzig (No. 169). Oil on canvas, relined. Signed.