Lot 1582 Dα

Fritz von Uhde painted several studies of children in preparation for his great work "Lasset die Kinder zu mir kommen" (Let the Little Children Come to Me, 188 x 290.5 cm, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, inv. 550) painted in 1884. These large format paintings were so detailed that nowadays we can barely refer to them as studies. However, the fact that Uhde never exhibited them at the time they were made supports the assumtion that he viewed them as such. They apparently remained in his studio until the turn of the century, and the present study of two children was first exhibited in the Kunstsalon Cassirer in Berlin in 1902. It was then sold to the German art collector Carl August Jung under the title "Zwei Kinder" (two children) in 1910.
The painting shows two girls before a plain brown screen, calmly facing left. The rigidity of the composition presents an unsentimental but perceptive representation of the children. The composition of the study was not used in the painting "Let the Little Children Come to Me", and the fact that the painting was first exhibited after 1900 is characteristic of the changing reception of Uhde's work. It is the austerity of the composition that defines the quality of the piece for a contemporary "modern" trained eye, but Hans Rosenhagen already counted it among the artist's best works in 1902 (op. cit., p. 261).