East Shore of Lake Starnberg

When Max Joseph Wagenbauer painted this view, the lake went by another official name. It was the Würmsee, after the river Würm that flows out of it, and it kept that name on paper until 1962, long after the railway had made Starnberg the name in common use. In 1811 King Max I Joseph, five years into Bavaria's life as a kingdom, had commissioned Wagenbauer to decorate the dining hall of Nymphenburg Palace with large paintings of Bavarian lakes. This canvas is large too, 135 by 165 centimetres. Wagenbauer signed it at the bottom centre and added a year that the museum reads as 1813 with a question mark, because the last digit is uncertain. The museum's catalogue lists cows and sheep on the shore, a boat, clouds and mountains.