"Aussichtsplatz am Starnberger See" (Viewpoint on Lake Starnberg) by Wilhelm Trübner

Lake Starnberg was a place of longing for the painter Wilhelm Trübner and a vacation home for numerous summer months from 1907 to 1912. In more than 80 variations, Trübner depicts his stays in the villa colony in Niederpöcking on the eastern shore of the lake. The works are unmistakable for their unobstructed, undisturbed view of the water.
The shoes lying coquettishly on the lawn and the clothes hastily left behind on the bench lend the picture its special charm and take it far beyond a landscape study. The amusing scene also fascinated the Bautzen industrialist Rudolf Weigang, who acquired the painting around 1917 through the Dresden gallery Arnold. Weigang had already made a name for himself as an art collector at that time.
Even before the family fled from the Soviet occupation in 1945, Rudolf Weigang had the interior of his villa documented by a Dresden photographer in 1943 – probably anticipating that war could lead to destruction and looting. The photographs also show Trübner's painting, which hung in Rudolf and Dorothee Weigang's bedroom. Much of the inventory has been considered lost since the Soviet occupation. A collection of paintings, porcelain, and sculptures was handed over to the Dresden State Art Collections in 1948, which examined the critical provenance of the works as part of a research project in 2016. The painting "Aussichtsplatz am Starnberger See" (Viewpoint on Lake Starnberg) was one of the few pieces that Rudolf and Dorothee Weigang took with them in their car when they fled, and it remained in the family's possession.

We are grateful to Claudia Maria Müller, Dresden State Art Collections, for her kind expert advice.