Carl Spitzweg

Private Collection, Germany
By descent from the above to the present owners since circa 1980

German painter Carl Spitzweg is considered one of the foremost artists of the Biedermeier era, a transitional period spanning the three decades between the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the Revolution of 1848.  The Biedermeier era celebrated simple, middle-class sensibilities and the importance of family and community, not the emotionally-heightened individualistic experiences preached by the Romantics.  Spitzweg, in particular, created numerous portraits of the average citizen going about his or her daily routine in a decidedly unprofound way.  Like many of his contemporaries, he was greatly influenced by the Dutch seventeenth-century masters, such as Frans van Mieris, Jan Steen and Gerard Terborch.  Petra ten-Doesschate Chu writes, “…the similarities between Biedermeier and seventeenth-century Dutch painting were not merely due to the ubiquity of Dutch art; they also reflected common social and political values.  In Germany as well as in France, the bourgeois culture of the seventeenth-century Dutch republic was a model for the liberal bourgeoisie of the mid-nineteenth century” (Nineteenth-Century European Art, 2003, p. 296).

 

In addition to creating domestic scenes of the humble yet culturally-minded German middle-class lifestyle of the 1830s and 40s, Biedermeier artists also depicted Nature as it related to humanity.  While the Romantics were chiefly interested in conveying the individual’s relationship with Nature as an infinitely profound, almost religious, experience, Biedermeier artists such as Spitzweg sought to reflect a more toned down, simple appreciation of Nature.  In On Top of the Hill (Auf Freier Hoehe), three children sit casually atop a gently sloping hill, looking out onto a seemingly endless expanse of earth and sky.  While the composition brings to mind German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich’s powerful depictions of man contemplating Nature, Spitzweg’s scene elicits a far different response.  The climate and atmosphere in On Top of the Hill (Auf Freier Hoehe) are relatively mild, the sky is clear and calm, and the landscape is even.  The children are relaxed, not standing in reverence to the infinite power of Nature, but rather resting almost lazily on the hilltop, simply enjoying the view.  A similar version of this work entitled Auf der Alm (1880) is in the permanent collection of the Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig.