Sale: 474 / Art of the 19th Century, Nov. 23. 2018 in Munich Lot 28

 

28
Adrian Ludwig Richter
Hirten am Feuer (Abendlandschaft), Ca. 1861.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 12,000 / $ 12,960
Sold:
€ 21,250 / $ 22,950

(incl. surcharge)
Hirten am Feuer (Abendlandschaft). Ca. 1861.
Oil on canvas , brown in brown, over pencil. Doubled.
Friedrich 81 (with the title "Ruhe auf der Flucht"). 50.5 x 69.5 cm (19.8 x 27.3 in).
Verso of stretcher with inscription. [CB].

PROVENANCE: Helene Kretzschmar, neé Richter, the artist's daughter.
Collection Professor Viktor Paul Mohn (1842-1911) and Margarethe Mohn, neé Gaber, the artist's granddaughter (1853-1928), Dresden/Berlin.
Collection Dr. Georg Blohm, Hamburg.
Galerie Commeter, Hamburg, cat. 34, collection Dr. Georg Blohm, auction from 7-10 November 1927, lot 1382, black-and-white illu. on plate XXVI.
Private collection Hamburg (acquired from aforementioned), since then family property.

"A marvelous calm, filled with a pure atmopshere, simple like a folk song."
Victor Dirksen, Galerie Commeter, Hamburg, 1927.

Richter usually worked on his motifs over a longer period of time, he changed individual elements and rearranged them in new compositions. In line with this method, similar motifs from this painting "Hirten am Feuer" from 1861 can be found in earlier works: In 1846 the woodcut illustration "Hirten und Herde, Mutter mit Säugling bei Vollmond" was released in the book "Hymnen für Kinder" (Hoff/Budde 1189). The book "Neue Strauss für‘s Haus", published in 1864, also contains the woodcut "Mondnacht. Mutter stillt ihr Kind vor dem Feuer; zwei Hirten blasen die Schalmei; hinten der Hund, vorn die Schafe" (Hoff/Budde 527), which shows a similar motif. As late as in 1873 Richter once more picks up some of the motif’s elements in his so-called last watercolor "Ruhe auf der Flucht", today part of the collection of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Our painting "Hirten am Feuer", kept in warm shades of brown, presumably remained unfinished because of Richter’s eye complaint, and yet – or perhaps even more so? – it is "a work of a wonderful mellow calm", as Dr. Victor Dirksen put it in the catalog of Galerie Commeter from 1927. It breathes "[..] a wonderful mellow calm, rifle with pure atmosphere, simple like a folksong."



28
Adrian Ludwig Richter
Hirten am Feuer (Abendlandschaft), Ca. 1861.
Oil on canvas
Estimate:
€ 12,000 / $ 12,960
Sold:
€ 21,250 / $ 22,950

(incl. surcharge)