Hunter with a Girl in Traditional Dress Carl Spitzweg

Love and its entanglements occupy a prominent place in Spitzweg’s work, not least because the experience of love was a defining factor in his life: his great love, the married Clara Lechner, died of bronchitis before their planned wedding, and following this painful loss, Spitzweg never entered into another serious relationship. Throughout his life, he remained the ‘proud bachelor’ whom he depicted countless times in his paintings. Perhaps this is why Spitzweg often depicts encounters between the sexes as images of resignation, as missed opportunities for something more – titles such as ‘Nix is’ or ‘Vorüber’, in which a hunter encounters a dairymaid, convey the hopelessness and futility of love: The hunter turns round and casts a longing, resigned glance after her – the days of youth are over; this young woman is no longer within his reach. But then, in this painting, Spitzweg shifts the perspective: a young man in hunting gear walks with a farm girl along a narrow path into the heart of the forest. He holds her close; they are devoted to one another and gaze into each other’s eyes – a moment of love fulfilled, reserved for youth. The deep, dark forest wraps protectively around them, concealing their secret and preserving their intimacy, shielding them from prying eyes – only the viewer bears witness to their tête-à-tête. The couple are about to venture deeper into the dark forest, which appears imposing yet not threatening – rather, the thicket gently envelops them, and within it, humanity and nature merge in both colour and atmosphere. For Spitzweg, the forest is a vehicle of emotional significance, and the couple become part of the forest’s organic fabric. The path, in turn, which leads into the darkness, symbolises the lovers’ journey from the darkness of the forest towards the light – above them, the treetops part, revealing a glimpse of the sunny, blue sky. This distinctive play of light – the contrast between the darkness of the forest and the view of the bright sky – is characteristic of almost all of Spitzweg’s forest paintings. Spitzweg repeated and varied this motif in numerous versions – most closely in a painting in Kassel, which is identical in subject matter but differs in its use of light (Hessen Kassel Heritage, Neue Galerie, Inv. No. AZ 134, Wichmann 1480) – a painting in which the subject matter is identical but the lighting is altered, featuring the same couple, for whom there is a preparatory sketch in Hamburg (Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, Inv. No. 1916-458). These repetitions and variations suggest that the subject was highly popular amongst his middle-class collectors, who not only found in such paintings their longing for unspoilt nature, but were also confronted with their own world through the figure of the hunter: The Revolution of 1848 had abolished the nobility’s exclusive right to hunt and, as a result, introduced a district hunting system in 1850 that required the employment of professional hunters and foresters, who were responsible for the protection of the forests. The local foresters and hunters, who often came from the middle classes, were frequently isolated within the social fabric of Bavarian villages as state officials representing the authorities and were shunned by the rural population, which made contact between them difficult. Marriages to locals, for example, were difficult, yet the dark forest offered opportunities to meet in secret and forge connections – Spitzweg, a keen observer, thus uses the motif of nature to depict and portray a slice of social reality in his paintings. Dr Peter Prange | 1808 - München - 1885 | 19. Jahrhundert | Gemälde | Nummer: 26x0049 | Provenance: Karoline Friederike Oetker (1867-1945), Bielefeld/Rittergut Hornoldendorf; Privatsammlung, Süddeutschland (durch Erbschaft von Vorgenannter).

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