Lot Essay
Andreas Achenbach and Hubert Salentin were near contemporaries and fellow members of the German realist school. Both artists studied at the Dusseldorf Academy. Achenbach was considered a pioneer of realism, rejecting fancy for a stern principle of truth to nature. This sensitive study of a church interior, executed when the artists were 47 and 40 respectively, is an intriguing memento of an undocumented collaboration. Hubert Salentin painted genre subjects and church interiors. His pictures are in several European museums, including On the Way to Church in the museum at Hamburg. Both artists died in 1910.