Lot 1189 | Spring Landscape

SPERL, JOHANN
1840 Buch (Fürth) - 1914 Aibling


Title: Spring Landscape.
Children with geese on the edge of a village.
Technique: Oil on wood.
Measurement: 36 x 15,5cm.
Frame/Pedestal: Framed.
Verso:
Various old numbers on the plate.

Literature:
W. Moritz: J. Sperl 1840-1914, Rosenheim 1990, cat. rais. no. 78, p. 142 with ill.

Provenance:
- Collection Sigmund Waldes;
- 1939/41 withdrawn due to Nazi persecution;
- 1943: the Munich art dealer Maria Dietrich acquires the painting at an auction of the Berlin auction house W. Lange;
- 1945: The painting is seized by the Americans at the Central Collecting Point in Munich;
- 1956: On the basis of Allied directives, the painting becomes the property of the Free State of Bavaria;
- 1957: Acquired as a transfer from state ownership for the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek;
- 27.08.2021: Restitution to the heirs of Sigmund Walde


Spring at last! You can just see it on the little girls' faces how happy they are to go for a walk with their governess along a narrow path out of the village. Above them, the birch trees are unfurling their delicate leaves and to the side, the free-range geese are plucking at the blossoms in the meadow. In the red apron dress of the girl in front there is enough room for the small treasures collected from the wayside.
Johann Sperl, who studied at the Academy in Munich and successfully completed his training there as a master pupil of Karl Theodor von Piloty, is convincing in this work not only through his narrative painting style, but above all by means of the well thought-out composition. The diagonally arranged walkway leads the viewer right into the picture motif, the green meadow areas correspond perfectly with the red of the dress and the tiled roofs in the foreground and middle ground. The white of the geese is repeated in the light birch trunks and in the dress of the smaller child in the centre.
Sperl, however, would not have been Wilhelm Leibl's brilliant artist partner if he had not only composed this painting perfectly and enriched it with entertaining details, but above all made it glow with an incredibly atmospheric lightness.