观看火车的侏儒

Spitzweg painted this in 1848, a year of revolutions across Europe, on the lid of a cigar box. A grey-bearded gnome stands at the mouth of his mountain cave and watches something new crossing the valley below, a railway train trailing a long line of locomotive smoke past a distant town. Germany's first rail line had opened only about a decade earlier, and here the very old world of caves and goblins meets the very new one of iron and steam. Spitzweg, who loved painting quiet, unhurried little figures, seems to be watching the train alongside his gnome. The panel is barely 25 centimetres across and has stayed in private hands.