Lot 71 Dα

Max Brückner, son of the stage setting painter Heinrich Brückner, first learnt this trade through working with his father, but later trained as a landscape painter under Albert Zimmerman in Munich. Brückner then worked as a scenery painter in Berlin and London before being given a lifelong contract as court theatre painter for his home town of Coburg in 1865.
The Coburg theatre painting studio was quite well known, and also provided decorations for the Bayreuth Festival. These set designs were even approved of by Richard Wagner himself, who was notoriously difficult to please.
Alongside his work as a set painter, Brückner also painted landscapes, architectural vedutas and depictions of theatre scenery, such as the present work which shows the set of Wagner's "Rheingold" opera. Brückner left a portion of the works from his estate to the collection of the Veste Coburg three years prior to his death.