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拍品專文
The present drawing is a study for Menzel's most famous painting, The Iron Rolling Mill (Eisenwalzwerk), also known as Modern Cyclopes. Menzel began working on the monumental canvas in 1872 and completed it in 1875. Its importance and impact immediately recognized and the painting acquired in the year of its completion for the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, where it can be seen to this day (inv. no. A I 201).
As an historicist artist and painter for the Prussian aristocracy, Menzel is often seen as caught between convention and modernism. His oeuvre, below the virtuoso surface, has an emotional and intellectual complexity that Françoise Forster-Hahn described as a ‘psychological dilemma, which is rooted in the social conditions of nineteenth century Germany, betray[ing] the artist’s inner isolation and his equivocal relation to Wilhelminian society’ (‘Authenticity into Ambivalence: The Evolution of Menzel’s Drawings’, in: Master Drawings, XVI, no. 3, Autumn 1978, pp. 255-346). At times seen as a forerunner of the impressionists or a master of realism, Menzel paid close attention to the conditions of modern life and of common people.
Menzel was an obsessive draughtsman, who carried pen and paper wherever he went and prepared his paintings down to every detail with countless sketches from life. The present study is one of several preparatory drawings for the figure of the worker cleaning himself after his shift, depicted in the middle ground on the far left of The Iron Rolling Mill.
The reception of his masterpiece exemplifies the ambiguity with which his paintings were met by his contemporaries as well as later commentators, and which may in fact be inherent to his work: while some saw the painting as a critique of the machine age and the plight of the workers, others took it for a glorification of the industrial might of the Prussian Empire. Both interpretations may be a misunderstanding of the artist, whose inspiration was, above all, rooted in direct observation, in this case of the workers and factories he deliberately visited. Notably, the iron rail forge of Königshütte in Upper Silesia, where he made numerous detailed sketches of machines and people. A considerable number of these study sheets are now at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (for example inv. nos. SZ Menzel N 154 and SZ Menzel N 156).
The chiaroscuro that mark the figure not only anticipates the atmosphere and fiery lighting of the mill's interior, but illustrates the characteristic fascination of the artist for shadows and dark spaces and highlights the tension of the dramatic scene.
As an historicist artist and painter for the Prussian aristocracy, Menzel is often seen as caught between convention and modernism. His oeuvre, below the virtuoso surface, has an emotional and intellectual complexity that Françoise Forster-Hahn described as a ‘psychological dilemma, which is rooted in the social conditions of nineteenth century Germany, betray[ing] the artist’s inner isolation and his equivocal relation to Wilhelminian society’ (‘Authenticity into Ambivalence: The Evolution of Menzel’s Drawings’, in: Master Drawings, XVI, no. 3, Autumn 1978, pp. 255-346). At times seen as a forerunner of the impressionists or a master of realism, Menzel paid close attention to the conditions of modern life and of common people.
Menzel was an obsessive draughtsman, who carried pen and paper wherever he went and prepared his paintings down to every detail with countless sketches from life. The present study is one of several preparatory drawings for the figure of the worker cleaning himself after his shift, depicted in the middle ground on the far left of The Iron Rolling Mill.
The reception of his masterpiece exemplifies the ambiguity with which his paintings were met by his contemporaries as well as later commentators, and which may in fact be inherent to his work: while some saw the painting as a critique of the machine age and the plight of the workers, others took it for a glorification of the industrial might of the Prussian Empire. Both interpretations may be a misunderstanding of the artist, whose inspiration was, above all, rooted in direct observation, in this case of the workers and factories he deliberately visited. Notably, the iron rail forge of Königshütte in Upper Silesia, where he made numerous detailed sketches of machines and people. A considerable number of these study sheets are now at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (for example inv. nos. SZ Menzel N 154 and SZ Menzel N 156).
The chiaroscuro that mark the figure not only anticipates the atmosphere and fiery lighting of the mill's interior, but illustrates the characteristic fascination of the artist for shadows and dark spaces and highlights the tension of the dramatic scene.