Spring Awakening Woldemar Graf von Reichenbach

Woldemar Graf von Reichenbach is regarded as one of the most idiosyncratic figures in late 19th-century Dresden painting. Born in 1846 in Walddorf near the Neisse, he received his artistic training at the Weimar Art School under Karl Gussow and Albert Brendel. Following study and educational journeys that took him to the Netherlands, England and Italy, amongst other places, he settled in the Dresden area and lived in Wachwitz from the 1890s onwards. His body of work defies clear stylistic categorisation. Contemporary critics particularly highlighted the unusual combination of meticulous painterly detail, bold colours and a pronounced sense of the fantastical and the grotesque. Reichenbach created landscapes, interiors, still lifes and genre scenes, as well as mythological and literarily inspired compositions. Particularly characteristic is that idiosyncratic visual world, as depicted in ‘Spring Awakening’, which a contemporary critic inscribed as ‘humorous and fantastical’. The finely detailed painting style, executed with a fine brush, stands in a deliberate tension with the often grotesquely exaggerated figures and situations. In our painting, a vast landscape dotted with ruins serves as the setting for a colourful scene featuring satyrs, centaurs, fairies and mermaids heralding the awakening of spring. It is precisely from this combination of Old Master-like attention to detail and whimsical inventiveness that he develops his unmistakable artistic style. Reichenbach thus remained an independent outsider within the Dresden art scene: his works combine Romantic and late Biedermeier traditions with a pronounced penchant for the bizarre, the literary and the fantastical. The fact that his works attracted attention during his lifetime in Dresden and at national art exhibitions is evidenced by his continuous presence in the exhibition scene of the time. | 1845 Waltdorf – Wachwitz 1914 | 19. Jahrhundert | Gemälde | Nummer: 26x2207 | Provenance: Privatsammlung, Hessen.

Estimation:€4,000

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