At dusk, several passers-by approach the viewer on a railroad track, including a couple in a tight embrace and a vendor. The picture depicts Stuttgart's Westbahnhof station, which was built between 1893 and 1896 following the conversion of the Hasenberg station. Hermann Pleuer had already worked on this motif several times a few years earlier with slight compositional variations. However, according to the first directory of Baron Franz von Koenig and Dr. Gabriele Kiesewetter, this picture only shows the merchant in the foreground and the locomotive entering the station on the right. Our motif is a version of Pleuer's theme, which he repeated several times in slight variations. What makes this composition so special is the focus on the travelers and the station as their stage; the locomotive with its brightly lit front lanterns is still in the background. Pleuer's friend Gustav Eduard Richard Hertle and his wife Anna Mehl were his models for the couple. Hertle was one of Pleuer's closest friends who, together with Joseph Kuttner and Franz Karl Vögele, formed a kind of artistic boheme in Stuttgart in the 1880s. Hertle had studied at the Stuttgart art school, but later gave up painting for financial reasons. In 1898, he married Anna Mehl, who was Pleuer's model, in particular for nude bathing scenes. [KT]