The love couple in the Alpine countryside, with the figures of the hunter and the dairymaid, is one of the most beautiful recurring motifs in Spitzweg's oeuvre. During his numerous hikes in the foothills of the Alps, Munich's local mountains and Tyrol, he was likely to frequently encounter these two as symbolic figures of an idyllic rural life. His sketchbooks contain numerous drawings of the couple, arranging their affection in ever new poses. Even from his early days, Spitzweg varied the theme in small details and nuances: sometimes a meeting takes place in a rocky gorge, sometimes on a mountain path at a small shrine, in a mountain forest or at a fountain. Spitzweg's artistic subtlety becomes evident in the encounters’ varying characters. A chance meeting, a rendezvous at night in secrecy or during the day at a midday rest, like the chronicle of a love story in the Alps. The two figures and their romance seem to have been a lasting preoccupation for him, and not just in terms of painting, as the numerous variations thereof testify to his joy in staging and telling the story. In some of the paintings, the landscape is in the foreground, in others - as in this case - the figures appear larger in the foreground. They turn away from the viewer, completely immersed in each other, and walk into the dense forest, behind which - in true Spitzwegian style - we catch a glimpse of the moon shimmering silvery behind the clouds. More clearly than inother variations on the theme, he located the scene in the present work in the mountains, as the rock face in right suggests. The lighting is also unusual in this painting, which appears to be lit from the front, as if in front of a forest stage. Alongside the vegetation and the hunter's suit, depicted in a dabbed and loose painting style in various shades of green, Spitzweg uses his preferred color scheme of red skirt, blue apron, black corsage and white blouse as the dairymaid's apparel, albeit in the smallest and most subtle doses. The two figures of hunter and dairymaid can also be found individually in single-figure scenes in Spitzweg's oeuvre; in this painting they come together in a secretly romantic way. [KT]