Two carthorses in harness, seen from behind

The size and proportions of the present drawing suggest that it comes from one of the notebooks that Menzel filled with sketches during the last years of his life. Closely comparable is a drawing of Bicycle wheels, cogs and pedals, dated 1890 and measuring 185 x 115 mm., now in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (C. Kleisch and M.U. Riemann-Reyher, Menzel (1815-1905), la névrose du vrai, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée d'Orsay, 1996 and elsewhere, no. 198). Like the present sheet, the Berlin drawing is in the artist's customary smooth carpenter's graphite pencil and seems to have been drawn on the spur of the moment on a stroll through Berlin. The immediacy of the present work is emphasized by Menzel's annotation that it shows 'black horses, wet from a shower of rain'.