Saints George and Martin
Josef Wüstner, Bayerischer Wald, Raimundsreut, first half 19th C.
Glass panel painted on reverse in opaque pigments. With retouches. Red painted and ebonised wood frame, H 33.5, W 24.5 cm.
The small community of Raimundsreut in the Bavarian Forest was the East Bavarian centre of folk reverse glass painting from the middle of the 18th century until well into the 19th century. Numerous families of painters cultivated the "Raimundsreut School of Painting" style over generations. By the beginning of the 19th century, around 40,000 reverse glass paintings had been produced here, which the itinerant traders, so-called "Kraxentrager", sold throughout southern Germany, in the Austrian Danube countries, in Bohemia and as far afield as South Tyrol. This art form had a significant influence on the development of Expressionism: a Raimundsreut reverse glass painting of St. George inspired Wassily Kandinsky to illustrate the title of the almanac "Der Blaue Reiter".
The exact model for the two reverse glass paintings is known to be a signed preliminary design sketch by Josef Wüstner (1807 - 1875), which shows the depictions laterally reversed. Thus we know that Wüstner realised his own designs. His workshop was located in Schönstein.
Provenance
Art market, Munich.
Literature
Illus. in Steiner, Hinterglas und Kupferstich. Hinterglasgemälde und ihre Vorlagen 1550 - 1850, Munich 2004, p. 224 ff.
The design published in Schuster, Risse zu Hinterglasbildern aus dem 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, Rosenheim 1978, illus. 108.
Exhibitions
2008 Schaezlerpalais der Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg.