The artist's foot

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The foot of the artist
Adolph von Menzel , 1876
38.5 × 33.5 cm
oil on wood
National Gallery , Berlin

The artist's foot is the title of a painting by Adolph von Menzel from 1876 . The picture, painted in oil on wood, has a height of 38.5 cm and a width of 33.5 cm. The unusual self-portrait shows the bare right foot of the approximately 60-year-old artist in the style of realism . The painting belongs to the collection of the National Gallery in Berlin.

Image description

In this painting, Menzel portrayed a part of the body that is often hidden from the public in Central Europe. It shows his bare right foot stretched out in front of him, which shows the traces of sixty years of life and may have been slightly deformed from wearing shoes or boots. Hugo von Tschudi , director of the Berlin National Gallery and Menzel's contemporary , reported that the painter created the picture during an illness. Presumably Menzel painted the image of his foot while he was sitting on the edge of the bed.

Without using a mirror, Menzel shows the foot from his own point of view. It looks a bit bigger than it would be if you carefully considered the perspective. The lighting suggests that he took the picture while sitting. The light falls from the top left on the back of the foot, the shin cut from the lower edge of the picture lies in the shadow area. In addition, the big toe, which is slightly inclined towards the viewer, casts a shadow on the top of the foot. The foot itself casts its shadow to the right. The approximately 60-year-old painter presents his body part full of details: he relentlessly shows his wrinkled skin with fine brushstrokes, underneath the veins are clearly visible and several points of light can be seen on the toes. The incarnate has a great variety of colors. While the toes appear in gradations between red and brown, the rest of the foot is kept much lighter and shows skin tones that range from white to pink to various shades of gray. The foot is painted against an indefinite background. In the upper part of the picture there is an almost monochrome dark brown area. In the lower part of the picture, the areas to the right and left of the foot are executed in white with a visible brush application. In the lower right corner the picture is signed and dated “A. Menzel 76 ".

Your own bare foot - an unusual motif

The fragmentary representation of a bare foot is unusual as an independent pictorial motif in 19th century art. Menzel had known the concentration on one part of the body since his training, where drawing anatomical studies was part of the class. Even after that, Menzel turned his attention to individual limbs. This is evidenced by his pictures of his own studio wall ( studio wall from 1852 , studio wall from 1872 ), in which he shows plaster models on one wall of his study. Such plaster models were used to capture the proportions and partially replaced the painter's human model, which was not always available. Menzel portrayed his own hand in the two gouaches of Menzel's right hand with a book and Menzel's right hand with a paint cup in 1864 . The left-hander Menzel shows in the pictures his right hand, which is not needed for drawing and painting and which holds an object at a time. As later in The Artist's Foot , the close observer Menzel underlines in these motifs that he considers a single part of the body full of details to be a motif worthy of picture.

  • Adolph von Menzel:
    studio wall , 1852

  • Adolph von Menzel:
    studio wall , 1872

  • Adolph von Menzel:
    Menzel's right hand with book , 1864

  • Adolph von Menzel:
    Menzel's right hand with paint bowl , 1864

In the history of art, bare feet are mainly found in full-length portrayals of people. Ancient sculptures can often be seen with bare feet. During a visit to the Munich Glyptothek in 1874, the Barberin Faun exhibited there attracted Menzel to a pencil drawing based on the ancient sculpture. In addition to drawing the overall sculpture, Menzel created a detailed study of the right foot on the same sheet.

Barefoot depictions of people are also repeated in Western painting. Beggars and peasants are shown with bare feet, but above all figures of saints or Jesus Christ . One of the most famous depictions of Christ's corpse is the painting Lamentation of Christ by Andrea Mantegna , in which the soles of the feet reach directly to the viewer. Menzel, who probably knew Mantegna's picture, similarly depicted dead bodies in Three Fallen Soldiers in a Barn in 1866. In their nakedness, the feet underline the transience of the bodies depicted, a theme that is repeated in the painting The Artist's Foot . Menzel took up the motif of the bare foot again in his late work. In the pencil drawing Right leg with rolled up trousers from 1894, he shows the right foot from above from a side perspective and also as a mirror image in the upper corner the left bare foot from the front.

  • Adolph von Menzel:
    Barberinischer Faun , 1874

  • Andrea Mantegna:
    Lamentation of Christ , 1475–1478

  • Adolph von Menzel:
    Three fallen soldiers in a barn , 1866

  • Adolph von Menzel:
    Right leg with rolled up trousers , 1894

Provenance

The provenance of the picture is not completely known. In 1904 the Berlin art dealer R. Wagner kept the painting in its inventory. The company co-founded by Hermann Pächter (1839–1902) had been selling works on behalf of Adolph Menzel since the 1880s. The next owner of the picture is a Prof. Oeder from Düsseldorf in 1905 . This could be the painter Georg Oeder . After that, the picture was in various private collections not known by name before it came into the possession of the Bochum gallery owner Alexander von Berswordt-Wallrabe. His company, known as art mediation , loaned the picture to the major Menzel retrospective in 1997 in Paris, Washington, DC and Berlin. The Association of Friends of the National Gallery then acquired the painting and donated it to the Berlin National Gallery in 1998.

literature

  • Michael Fried : Menzel's realism: art and embodiment in nineteenth century Berlin . Yale University Press, New Haven 2002, ISBN 0-300-09219-9 .
  • Jenns Howoldt, Stephanie Hauschild: Menzel's studio wall . Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg 1999.
  • Claude Keisch, Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher (ed.): Adolph Menzel: 1815–1905, the labyrinth of reality . Exhibition catalog Paris, Washington, DC and Berlin, DuMont, Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7701-3704-3 .
  • Bernhard Maaz (Ed.): Adolph Menzel radically real . Hirmer, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7774-4175-7 .
  • Jan Rave (ed.): Association of Friends of the National Gallery Berlin: for the 25th anniversary of the association . Seemann, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-363-00796-5 .
  • Angelika Wesenberg , Eve Förschl (Ed.): National Gallery Berlin. The XIX. Century. Catalog of the exhibited works . Seemann, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-363-00765-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holz is specified as the image carrier in the catalog of the Nationalgalerie, see Angelika Wesenberg, Eve Förschl (Ed.): Nationalgalerie Berlin. The XIX. Century. Catalog of the exhibited works , p. 299. This information can also be found predominantly in other literature. Deviating from this, the image carrier is referred to as cardboard in Bernhard Maaz (Ed.): Adolph Menzel radikal real , p. 232.
  2. ↑ As a self-portrait called by Hélène Hiblot in Bernhard Maaz (ed.): Radically real Adolph Menzel , p.232.
  3. ↑ Hélène Hiblot: The foot of the artist in Bernhard Maaz (ed.): Radically real Adolph Menzel , p.232.
  4. ↑ Claude Keisch, Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher (ed.): Adolph Menzel: 1815–1905, the labyrinth of reality , p. 296.
  5. ↑ Hélène Hiblot: The foot of the artist in Bernhard Maaz (ed.): Radically real Adolph Menzel , p.232.
  6. ↑ Michael Fried: Menzel's realism: art and embodiment in nineteenth century Berlin , pp. 50–52.
  7. ↑ Angelika Wesenberg, Eve Förschl (Ed.): National Gallery Berlin. The XIX. Century. Catalog of the works exhibited , p. 299.
  8. ↑ "Such a choice of subject matter is unusual in nineteenth-century painting" in Michael Fried: Menzel's realism: art and embodiment in nineteenth century Berlin , pp. 50-52.
  9. ↑ On Menzel's work based on plaster models, see Jenns Howoldt in Jenns Howoldt, Stephanie Hauschild: Menzels Atelierwand , pp. 36–37.
  10. ↑ Reference to Mantegna, for example, in Claude Keisch, Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher (ed.): Adolph Menzel: 1815–1905, the labyrinth of reality , p. 298.
  11. ↑ Claude Keisch, Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher (ed.): Adolph Menzel: 1815–1905, the labyrinth of reality , p. 296.
  12. ↑ The ownership structure up to 1997 can be found in the incomplete description in Claude Keisch, Marie Ursula Riemann-Reyher (ed.): Adolph Menzel: 1815–1905, the labyrinth of reality , p. 295.
  13. ↑ Acquisition of the picture in 1998, see Jan Rave (ed.): Association of Friends of the National Gallery Berlin: for the 25th anniversary of the association , p. 306.
  14. ↑ Gift to the Nationalgalerie in 1998, see Angelika Wesenberg, Eve Förschl (ed.): Nationalgalerie Berlin. The XIX. Century. Catalog of the works exhibited , p. 299.