Forge in winter

Details

Bühler/Krückl 721
Literature:
Hans-Peter Bühler and Albrecht Krückl, Heinrich Bürkel, mit Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Munich 1989, p. 312, cat. no. 721, with ill.
Provenance:
Weinmüller, Munich, auction, 15 March 1961, lot 918;
Georg Schäfer Collection, Schweinfurt (inv. no. 71401486), on the reverse on the stretcher with the label;
Neumeister, Munich, auction “Pictures from the Georg Schäfer Collection II”, 25 February 2005, lot 247;
since then in private ownership, Bavaria.

Description

This depiction belongs to the theme of “Forges in Winter”. A snow-covered path leads past a forge at the foot of a huge rock massif. The tracks of a sledge can be made out in the fresh snow. A sow with her piglets sniffs under the snow for something edible. Two horses are tethered at the entrance to the smithy, behind them a man stands in the freezing cold. It must be cosy and warm in the smithy itself, where the hammer is being made to glow in the forge.
Bürkel’s Biedermeier idylls are also always images of farewell, as they depict the last hidden corners of the pre-industrial way of life in an era in which railways were already in operation and factories, including those for metalworking, were being built.