Wilhelm Leibl

Deutscher Kunst-Verein (1898)
Oscar Rothschild (acquired in the Deutscher Kunst-Verein tombola on 29 November 1898)
Dr Alexander Lewin, Berlin and Guben (co-owner and director of the Berlin-Gubener Hutfabrik AG)
Expropriated from the above under the National Socialist regime
Deutsches Reich for the planned Hitler museum in Linz (by 1938)
Central Collecting Point, Munich (by 1945)
Bundesrepublik Deutschland (on loan to the Kunsthalle Bremen since 1966)
Restituted to the heirs of Alexander Lewin (2009)

Bremen, Kunsthalle (on permanent exhibition until 2009)
Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus: Leibl und sein Kreis, 1974, No. 38
Munich, Neue Pinakothek; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum: Wilhelm Leibl zum 150. Geburtstag, 1994, no. 162, illustrated in the catalogue

Jahresbericht des Deutschen Kunst-Vereins 1898, Berlin, 1899
Georg Gronau, 'Leibl', Künstlermonographien, vol. 50, Bielefeld and Leipzig 1901, p. 64
Emil Waldmann, Wilhelm Leibl. Eine Darstellung seiner Kunst. Gesamtverzeichnis seiner Gemälde, Berlin, 1930, no. 242
Gerhard Gerkens and Ursula Heiderich, Katalog der Gemälde des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts in der Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, 1973, p. 178
Eberhard Ruhmer, Der Leibl-Kreis und die Reine Malerei, Rosenheim, 1984, p. 401, no. 175
Birgit Schwarz, Hitlers Museum. Die Fotoalben Gemäldegalerie Linz, 2004 (no. 35 in lost vol. XII of the photo albums made for Hitler)

  

The panel is in good condition, flat and even. There are some light strokes and spots of old retouching visible under ultraviolet light in the green background, with a few very minor spots to the figure's nose and chin, and one minor spot below her scarf. There are traces of frame rubbing at the extreme edges, with a minor loss along the upper edge, right of centre. Overall the work is in very good original condition, and is ready to hang. Held in a wide, decorative carved wood gold-painted frame.
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In this both striking and deeply sympathetic portrait, Leibl depicts his young cook, Theresia Haltmaier (whom he affectionately referred to as his 'Malresl'), not in her formal best as in the painting in the Hamburger Kunsthalle (fig.1), but in her everyday work clothes wearing  a white scarf tied in a bow. Her expression is calm and even dreamy, and while she faces the viewer, her gaze is into space. Characteristically, Leibl imbues the finely modelled face with intense focus, setting it into relief by means of the much more loosely painted background.

Theresia Halmaier became Leibl's favourite model in his paintings and drawings of the late 1890s. In addition to the Hamburg painting of 1897, she is the subject of In Erwartung (Anticipation) of 1898 (Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig), as well as appearing in the two versions of In der Küche (In the Kitchen) (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne), also of 1898. Compositionally, the present work can be compared to a charcoal drawing of Theresia in the Albertina, Vienna (fig. 2).

In 1873, after studying at the Munich Academy and a spell in Paris, Leibl moved to Bavaria where he was to spend the rest of his life. Though from the Rhineland, Leibl felt a tremendous affinity towards the humble people of the Bavarian countryside, drawn by their friendliness and down-to-earthness which appealed to his deeply human temperament. By his own account, he preferred painting peasant girls, because 'ladies always want to be entertained while sitting', while the girls of the villages let him get on with his work and were less vain. 

Leibl's entire oeuvre is about the human face, at times concentrated, devoted, contemplative, but always richly expressive and painted with an unashamed straightforwardness. Whether in his earlier, more painterly works, in which composition is subordinate to a highly finished paint surface, or in his later, more reduced pictures showing the workings underlying his draughtsmanship, a simplicity and almost Düreresque clarity always remains, lifting his subjects out of their modest circumstances to a higher plane.

Fig. 1: Wilhelm Leibl, Bayerisches Mädchen, 1897, Hamburger Kunsthalle

Fig. 2: Wilhelm Leibl, Niederschauendes Mädchen, circa 1897, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna