Oil Painting, 'The Hay Wagon', Karl Schlesinger, Swiss school, 1860s

A peasant leading a hay wagon home from the fields at sunset; a child is seated atop the load of hay.

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons, 1870

Historical significance: This painting is a fine example of Schlesinger'art who was influence by the Flemish painter Dyckmans and the Dusseldorf school, which proximity to the Netherlands, received strong influences of the work of the 17th-century Dutch genre masters without retaining however their broad and free manner. The Dusseldorf school painting is still in fact quite Romantic in taste and by the 1850s much of the work produced by the Düsseldorf artists consisted of sentimental and anecdotal genre scene such as the present one, reminiscent of the Biedermeier imagery.
Schlesinger particularly favoured rustic subject matter and backlighting effect at dusk. Another similar composition, Returning shepherds dated 1863 is in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

The term 'Biedermeier' refers to bourgeois life and art in Germanic Europe, an extensive area embracing such cities as Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna and Prague, from 1815 (the Congress of Vienna) to the revolutions of 1848. Biedermeier painters were ideologically opposed to academic and religious painting and favoured such subject matter as portraits, landscapes and genre scenes, with still-lifes, especially of flowers. They share a similar technique in the use of separate, clear tones and a high degree of finish, reminiscent of Neo-Classicism while they tend to convey a greater sentimentality. By the 1880s, the influence of this artistic movement was on the wane and was even used pejoratively to characterize the reactionary bourgeois elements in society, which remained quite indifferent to social problems and cultivated a sense of order and sobriety, especially in the private sphere and the domestic realm.

Karl Schlesinger (1825-1893) was born in Lausanne. He became the pupil of Dyckmans (1811-1888) in Antwerp. In 1852, he settled in Dusseldorf. He was essentially a landscape and genre painter but is also known for a series of history paintings illustrating scenes from the Reformation.

This painting is a fine example of Schlesinger's output. He favoured rustic subject matter with a high degree of finish and atmospheric effect such as the present sunset backlighting composition. This formula is typical of the Dusseldorf, one of the main artistic centre in 19th-century Germanic Europe. By comparison with similar works, this painting can be reasonably dated from the 1860s.

514-1870