Oil Painting, 'Literary Researches: an 18th Century Costume Piece', Carl Wilhelm Anton Seiler, 1881

An oil painting depicting two gentlemen in 18th century costume seated in a study examining a book at a table. In the background is a curtained bookcase supporting large volumes, with a celestial globe and a further volume on the top, and a map of Asia (?) with 'Persia' prominently marked. In the right foreground is a wastepaper basket and a crumpled envelope.

Bequeathed by Joshua Dixon

Joshua Dixon, by whom bequeathed to the Bethnal Green Museum, 1886

Historical significance: A characteristic costume piece depicting figures in eighteenth century costume by a painter who specialised in this genre. For a similar subject see: P.48-1917.

By 1892 such works seemed dated to critical commentators; in that year Walter Shaw-Sparrow observed of 1041-1886: 'Of Seiler's highly-wrought panel "Literary Researches", what need be said? It is interesting, no doubt...and yet...the interest lies not quite so much in the result as in the intention'; cf. The Magazine of Art , vol. XV, 1892, p. 164 & repr.

Carl Wilhelm Anton Seiler (1846-1921) was born at Wiesbaden, he studied architecture at the Bauakademie in Berlin and painting with Karl Raupp in Munich. He lived in Berlin, where he taught at the Academy in 1894-95, and in Munich, where he was a honorary member of the Academy from 1890 and a member from 1895. His works are in a number of German collections, and the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff and the National Gallery in Melbourne, as well as the V&A.

During the second half of the nineteenth century the enduring popularity especially of Dutch, Flemish, Spanish and French genre paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fostered a taste throughout Europe both for realist paintings of everyday life and for more idealised historicising 'costume pieces' representing domestic subjects set in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries.

1041-1886