Lot Essay
When Menzel's parents moved to Berlin from Breslau in 1830, they typified the massive demographic influx that transformed the city so fundamentally in the nineteenth century. From being a relatively minor regional centre, with an estimated population of 200,000 at the end of the Napoleonic era, Berlin grew to well over two million inhabitants at the time of Menzel's death in 1905. In recalling the Berlin of the 1830s in his middle age, the poet and friend of Menzels, Theodor Fontane, described Berlin then as 'a large village, richly endowed with administrative offices and military barracks.'.
Against a backdrop of such monumental expansion, the recurrence of the building site in Menzel's work must come as no surprise. Sketches and paintings of buildings going up all over town are part of his oeuvre throughout his career. Social interest apart, it was unquestionably the building boom at this time in Germany, known as the Gründerjahre (founders' years), that led Menzel to make such a large number of critical and documentary drawings. Finished works, however, are relatively rare.
The present painting, Maurer an einem Hausbau, is related to ten studies of workers in the 1874-5 sketchbook, now in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (sketchbook 46). A fascinating character study of the six workers, Maurer an einem Hausbau is set against the still vast green expanse of trees in the middle background, intimating the conflict between industrialisation and nature that is taking place here.
Increasingly during this period, Menzel began exploring contemporary life as his subject matter. One of his most monumental works, The Iron Rolling Mill from the same year, addresses the situation of workers in Germany after the second world economic crisis of 1873 to an unprecedented degree, and Maurer an einem Hausbau, though more intimate in scale, clearly shares the same spirit of concern.
Against a backdrop of such monumental expansion, the recurrence of the building site in Menzel's work must come as no surprise. Sketches and paintings of buildings going up all over town are part of his oeuvre throughout his career. Social interest apart, it was unquestionably the building boom at this time in Germany, known as the Gründerjahre (founders' years), that led Menzel to make such a large number of critical and documentary drawings. Finished works, however, are relatively rare.
The present painting, Maurer an einem Hausbau, is related to ten studies of workers in the 1874-5 sketchbook, now in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (sketchbook 46). A fascinating character study of the six workers, Maurer an einem Hausbau is set against the still vast green expanse of trees in the middle background, intimating the conflict between industrialisation and nature that is taking place here.
Increasingly during this period, Menzel began exploring contemporary life as his subject matter. One of his most monumental works, The Iron Rolling Mill from the same year, addresses the situation of workers in Germany after the second world economic crisis of 1873 to an unprecedented degree, and Maurer an einem Hausbau, though more intimate in scale, clearly shares the same spirit of concern.