Resting Walkers

In 1851 Carl Spitzweg set out for the Great Exhibition in London with his friend Eduard Schleich, a Munich landscape painter, and on the way the two stopped in Paris. There Spitzweg saw the work of the Barbizon painters, and above all the forest pictures of Narcisse Díaz, small, loosely painted woodland scenes with glowing colour and lively contrasts of light. Atmospheric forest scenes became a recurring subject for him afterwards, and this little panel, about 31 centimetres wide, belongs to those later years. The museum dates it only to between about 1865 and 1870, and its catalogue terms are simple, a forest, trees, a bench, walkers taking a pause. The city of Munich bought it in 1925, four years before the Lenbachhaus opened as its gallery.