SPITZWEG, Carl

Carl Spitzweg, at once master of the fairy tale or the bittersweet anecdote, became one of the most popular of all German painters. Occasionally, he could abandon his illustrational mode in favour of a more spontaneous manner. A major example is found in a small, vertical sketch, Kite Flying, that is close to Constable and the Impressionists in its fresh observation of light, time and motion. Here the kites tell a tale of liberation, as if their freedom were shared by the artist.

The figure of the angling monk was painted by Spitzweg in ten versions.

Spitzweg was regarded as the secluded “painter-poet of Munich’s Heumarkt,” an eccentric who never displayed his extensive traveling. With Spitzweg Biedermeier painting as such comes to an end. He is still describing this world, but with the objectivity and distance of the observer. He can invest the seemingly idyllic scenes and subjects with a humour that is often biting. The Poor Poet is and apt example of this.

Three versions of the Poor Poet are known. It is thought that Etenhuber (1720-82), a poet living in impoverished circumstances in Munich, was the model. Spitzweg shows the poet writing in bed to keep warm, for there is snow outside on the roofs and he has no wood to heat the stove. But he seems unconcerned at his scant means and the leaking roof, and his pen in his mouth, he counts off the meter of his rhyme on his fingers.

Spitzweg was regarded as the secluded “painter-poet of Munich’s Heumarkt,” an eccentric who never displayed his extensive traveling. With Spitzweg Biedermeier painting as such comes to an end. He is still describing this world, but with the objectivity and distance of the observer. He can invest the seemingly idyllic scenes and subjects with a humour that is often biting. The Poor Poet is and apt example of this.

Three versions of the Poor Poet are known. It is thought that Etenhuber (1720-82), a poet living in impoverished circumstances in Munich, was the model. Spitzweg shows the poet writing in bed to keep warm, for there is snow outside on the roofs and he has no wood to heat the stove. But he seems unconcerned at his scant means and the leaking roof, and his pen in his mouth, he counts off the meter of his rhyme on his fingers.