Peasants fleeing from a storm (peasants in front of the chapel)

Details

Literatur:
Rosel Gollek und Winfried Ranke (Hrsg.), Franz von Lenbach 1836-1904, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, München 1987, S. 214, Kat.-Nr. 50, mit Abb. S. 215.

Provenienz:
Galerie Schöninger, München, 18.2.1954;
Sammlung Georg Schäfer, Schweinfurt (Inv.-Nr. 2939), verso mit dem Etikett;
Privatsammlung, Süddeutschland.

Description

Preliminary study for Lenbach’s now lost early work “Landleute vor einem Gewitter zu einer Kapelle flüchtend” (Country people fleeing from a thunderstorm to a chapel) (formerly Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Magdeburg, see comparative illus.). In November 1857, Lenbach had joined Karl Theodor von Piloty’s painting and composing class, and from then on, working on sketches was the order of the day. In a series of sketches (some of them entitled “Hörzhausen”) from 1856 onwards, he developed a dramatically charged scene based on the situation of a walker in front of a wayside chapel: at the height of summer, farmers have interrupted their work in the cornfield while the clouds gather in the gloomy sky and seek refuge with the Virgin Mary in the chapel on the field. The scene is bathed in a pale light. The farmers reach the shelter just in time before the thunderstorm breaks out. Although the group of people is only depicted in sketch form, the composition of the final version is already fully developed in the fleeting study. Lenbach reports: “(…) I stayed with Piloty for about a year and a half and painted two pictures with him. The first was peasants fleeing to a chapel in a thunderstorm. (…) The peasant picture was my first attempt to get into the Munich Kunstverein; it was successful and I received 450 guilders. At the same time I received a state scholarship totalling 500 guilders (…)” (Wilhelm Wyl, Franz von Lenbach, Gespräche und Erinnerungen, Stuttgart 1904, p. 34). Lenbach was then to use the money to finance his first trip to Italy.

Handwritten confirmation of authenticity by Josefine Lenbach (sister of the artist) on the verso of the base.