Eavesdropped date

August Ludwig Most, after studies at the Royal Prussian Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, a study trip to Dresden and numerous travels, among others to Bavaria, Lower Austria and Tirol, returned to Pomerania and settled for good in his home-town Szczecin, where he lived until the end of his life. Living in the Biedermeier epoch after Napoleon’s death, apart from portraits, he also skilfully painted scenes showing the daily life of residents of towns and villages. The painting created in 1844 was presented at an exhibition of the Berlin Academy directly after completion and subsequently purchased by a private person. For a number of years, it remained known exclusively from literary sources. In 2009, it resurfaced in a German auction houses and was purchased to the collections of the Szczecin museum, significantly supplementing the hitherto set of the works of this artist. The anecdotal genre scene ˗ full of humour with a tinge of frivolity ˗ was presented in a picturesque, southern German landscape illuminated by the rays of the setting sun. It is a representative example of the Biedermeier painting. It forms the artist’s universal response to the demands of the contemporary art market and is an excellent match for the gradually evolving aesthetic needs of the middle class, which became affluent in the period of the brief economic stabilisation of the epoch preceding the March Revolution.

Dariusz Kacprzak