Picture "The Eternal Bridegroom" (1855-58), framed
Picture "The Eternal Bridegroom" (1855-58), framed
Quick info
reproduction on paper | framed | passe-partout | glazed | size 71 x 55 cm (h/w)
Detailed description
Picture "The Eternal Bridegroom" (1855-58), framed
Already during his lifetime, "The Eternal Bridegroom" was the painter's most popular subject: gallantly, the suitor hands a bouquet to his beloved. Spitzweg painted the motif several times with slight variations at the urging of his collectors.
Original: Oil on canvas, privately owned.
High-quality edition on paper. Sheet size 80 x 49 cm (h/w). Framed in silver-coloured solid wood frame with passe-partout, glazed. Size 71 x 55 cm (h/w).
Producer: ars mundi Edition Max Büchner GmbH, Bödekerstraße 13, 30161 Hanover, Germany Email: info@arsmundi.de
About Carl Spitzweg
1808-1885 - German painter and draughtsman
Carl Spitzweg was one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier period. He created numerous paintings, oil studies, drawings and watercolours whose peculiar, a whimsical charm made him the most popular representative of the bourgeois genre and landscape painting in southern Germany.
Spitzweg came from a wealthy Munich merchant family and initially completed a degree in natural sciences. An illness led him to the decision to become a painter. He continued to train himself and soon found connections with other colleagues of the Munich school of painting, such as Moritz von Schwind.
Spitzweg is one of the great German painters and draughtsmen of the 19th century. His best-known pictures, such as "The Poor Poet", the "Bookworm" or the "Eternal Wedding Man", show eccentrics of bourgeois society indulging in their respective hobbies.
Carl Spitzweg's imagination and outstanding painting technique were combined with perhaps the most important ingredient: his sense of humour. With wit and affectionate exaggeration, the inveterate bachelor created character studies of quirky eccentrics and romantic encounters - always told lovingly and with a twinkle in his eye. This is how he became one of the most popular German artists. He chose very small formats and portrayed the figures precisely and in detail in their respective milieu. In this way, he achieved a satirical overdrawing of the types that reached into the grotesque. In his later works, he placed more emphasis on the spontaneous, sketchy and moving, which is particularly evident in his landscape depictions.
He was not discovered by art history until around 1900, and throughout his life, he was never as famous as other contemporary painters.
Art and culture set between Romanticism and Realism in the German-speaking world in the period from 1815 to approx. 1860. The epoch received its name through the magazine "Fliegende Blätter", where, between 1855 and 1857, the poems by Swabian schoolteacher Gottlieb Biedermaier were regularly published.
The painting of this period was dominated by intimate, comfortable motifs. Masters of the Biedermeier include Carl Spitzweg, J. P. Hasenclever, G. F. Kersting. Ludwig Richter distinguished himself as an excellent illustrator.
After the German Centennial Exhibition 1906 in Berlin, the term "Biedermeier" established to describe fashion and furniture of simple, unadorned styles, yet of high-quality craftsmanship.