The guardian of the valley
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| The guardian of the valley |
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| Hans Thoma , 1893 |
| Oil on cardboard |
| 99 × 75 cm |
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New Masters Gallery in the Albertinum State Art Collections Dresden |
The Guardian of the Valley is a painting by Hans Thoma from 1893. It is exhibited in the Neue Meister gallery in the Albertinum in Dresden .
description
Thomas Bild is a concise example of the longing for the Middle Ages and the romanticism of knights, which was widespread from the beginning to the end of the 19th century. The picture shows a monumental knight who stands unarmed in front of a Black Forest backdrop. It is night and the knight is holding a dark flag in his right hand and his helmet in his left hand. The guardian acts like an actor in front of a stage. He looks lonely into the valley behind him. Reflex lights shine on his armor, lifting him out of the twilight. The picture is drawn with HTh at the bottom left .
history
Since the early 1880s, Thoma increasingly painted knight figures, inspired by Richard Wagner's works, above all about the Grail story and the Nibelungenlied . He combined the medieval world of legends with the idyllic mountain and forest landscapes of southern Germany. The picture gallery acquired the version created in 1893 directly from the artist through the art dealer Emil Richter in Dresden. The work was exhibited on the second floor of the Sempergalerie , where the modern department of the picture gallery had been housed since 1890.
In the first public presentation of the collection of paintings from the 19th and 20th century after the Second World War during the 1950s in the mountain palace of Pillnitz was the valley The Guardian no longer issued. Today it is exhibited in the Klinger Hall and recorded under gallery number 2486.
Earlier version
An earlier version of the picture "The Guardian of the Valley" was created by Thoma in 1889; it was privately owned in Dresden until 1930. Then the merchant and art collector Siegfried Buchenau bought the picture for his collection at Gut Niendorf near Lübeck . He died in 1932, and in 1937 his widow Anna Buchenau sold it through Karl Haberstock to Adolf Hitler , who bought it for the Berghof (Obersalzberg) ; it has been lost since 1945.
literature
- Andreas Dehmer: Painting of the Fin de Siècle . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2010, ISBN 978-3-942422-23-9 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Birgit Schwarz: Geniewahn: Hitler and the art. Böhlau, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78307-7 , p. 157 with ill. 53.
Web links
- The guardian of the valley in the online collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden