Falcon encountering a pigeon
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| Falcon encountering a pigeon |
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| Adolph von Menzel , 1844 |
| Oil on paper, mounted on wood |
| 102.7 x 119 cm |
| Old National Gallery , Berlin |
Falcon encountering a pigeon is a painting by Adolph von Menzel . It was once used as a target .
description
The painting shows a falcon, with an open beak and spread claws, pouncing in a turn from the top right on a white pigeon, which, coming from the left, also with spread feet and folded down, spread tail, as if it were about to land, immediately flies under him. The scene is shown in full format: The outstretched wings of the bird of prey reach into the upper left corner of the picture and the upper edge of the picture, while the tail feathers of the prey end just above the lower edge of the picture. The background is a depiction of the sky, which towards the edges of the painting takes on a gloomy, gray-greenish tint and seems to merge downwards into a suggested forest or city backdrop, while there is more sky blue in the middle and the central point of the composition, the Space between the ready-to-grasp beak and the claws of the falcon and the prey is highlighted by a white cloud in the background.
In a catalog description from 1980, the coloring of the painting is particularly emphasized: “The splendidly agitated painterly unity of the disheveled plumage and the thunderstorm glowing sky, the soft interweaving of the white and white-gray tones in the pigeon's wings, against which the red hooks are raise the claw - all of this is reminiscent of Menzel's great admiration for Rubens : in the literary club ' Tunnel over the Spree ' he was given the name of the great Flemish as a club name. ”In an older publication it can be read:“ Here now the color is cheering , the magnificently moving animals shine against a wonderful blue ”.
history
Falcon encountering a pigeon is one of Menzel's earlier works. The painting, executed on several sheets of paper in oil paint and mounted on a wooden plate, was created around 1844. It was apparently actually used as a target in a shooting club, as numerous bullet points that were later repaired prove. The painting came into the possession of the Berlin National Gallery in 1906 . It was sold by the Berlin art dealer Ernst Zaeslein. The previous owner was Mrs. Paasche District Court Judge in Berlin-Friedenau . The picture had previously been given to Captain a. D. and District Court Judge Paasche in Liegnitz in Silesia . In the National Gallery it was given a prominent place in the Menzelsaal; in Georg Dehio's history of German art , the picture was described as a masterpiece that Menzel did not appreciate highly enough.
Eckhard Fuhr speculated whether Georg Baselitz 's picture of a falling eagle , which was hanging in Chancellor Schröder's office at the time , contained a quote from Menzel's picture. If this is the case, he wrote in Die Welt , “Schröder's choice of images could even be taken from a historical-political message. The Chancellor “has placed himself in the Prussian tradition on the one hand, but also bent it over on the other.
Incidentally, an early mention of Menzel's disc image also sees the bird of prey depicted by Menzel not as a falcon, but as an eagle.
title
The title of the picture, in which the extended participle is placed after its reference word and which in some publications also contains a comma after the word “falcon”, was used several times by German scholars to consider the participle. In an anthology in the magazine Wirkendes Wort in 1962, for example, one could read that participles are already a frequently used means in the visual arts to vividly reproduce the content of the picture, but the picture becomes "even more expressive in language if the participle follows its adjoining word " and take the final position after the verbal additions, as is the case with Menzel's pigeon picture title.
literature
- MR, A Menzel picture from earlier times. Falcon encountering a pigeon , in: Illustrierte Zeitung 126, No. 3275, Leipzig, April 5, 1906, p. 517
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b falcon encountering a pigeon , on www.bildindex.de
- ↑ Ludwig Justi: German painting art in the nineteenth century: a guide through the national gallery . J. Bard, 1920, p. 144.
- ↑ View of the exhibition in the Nationalgalerie, Menzelsaal in the German Digital Library .
- ^ Georg Dehio, Gustav Pauli, History of German Art. Volume 4 , de Gruyter 1934, p. 182
- ↑ Eckhard Fuhr, Power and Art. Why Schröder needed a falling eagle , in: Die Welt , February 19, 2010 ( online )
- ↑ Georg Malkowsky: Deutsche Kunst ...: Illustrated magazine for the entire German art production Central-Organ Deutscher Kunst- und Künstler-Vereine 1896, p. 438.
- ^ Hans-Gert Roloff: Yearbook for international German studies: Congress reports . H. Lang, 1975, p. 204.
- ^ Acting word: anthology 1962, p. 163.