Heinrich Bürkel is considered one of the most famous Munich landscape and genre painters working in the Biedermeier style. His portrayals of peasants, hunters, robbers and beggars, usually placed in stunning alpine landscapes, became technically more sophisticated subsequent to his travels through Italy in the years 1830-32. Using an extremely subtle glaze painting technique, he skillfully captured the clear light effects associated with the mountains and created a synthesis between spatial and coloristic impressions. One of his favorite motifs was the mountain village, an environment that allowed him to create a harmonious alliance between the imposing landscape and a prominently featured figure, often in closely observed detail. Set somewhere between landscape and genre painting, these scenes were modeled on the works of Dutch masters, which served the self-taught Bürkel as a guide to painting and whose subtle artistic precision, coupled with a close adherence to reality, he adopted. In 1834, King Louis I took notice of Bürkel and bought a small painting at the Munich Kunstverein, thus setting the autodidact and non-academic artist on the path to public success. In the years that followed, Bürkel had many buyers among the princes of Europe, as well as customers in North America. [KT]