Hubert von HERKOMER

Herkomer painted genre scenes of Bavarian peasants throughout his career. He produced several drawings of Bavarian and Alpine scenes for The Graphic magazine in the 1870s, and his first major exhibited painting, After the Toil of the Day, was set in the village of Garmisch in the Bavarian Tyrol and was shown at the Royal Academy in 1873.

In 1885 the artist exhibited a group of drawings and watercolours, made at Ramsau in Bavaria earlier that year and including the present sheet, at the Fine Art Society in London, under the title Life and Work in Bavaria’s Alps. As the introduction to the catalogue noted, ‘In view…of the changes that are so rapidly altering the aspect of Europe, we are doubly grateful to the artist who, by pen or pencil, preserves for us those characteristics, now, alas!, fast vanishing. This it is that Professor Herkomer has elected to do for the people among whom stood his cradle…’