Lot 2515 Dα

This scene of an artist's studio shows a young woman seated on a plinth. The large room is professionally furnished as an artist's studio complete with the recently invented and then fashionable carbide lighting, a plinth, a linen cloth background, and a stove to keep a comfortable room temperature. Two men, who Wichmann identifies as the artist and his patron, are seen conversing on the left.
The present work was painted in Italy, probably Venice, where the so-called Drummond light had been in use since 1826. The full signature indicates that the work was painted in the 1840s (Wichmann). Since Spitzweg only decided to take up painting full time in the early 1830s, the work is likely to have been painted during his third trip to Italy in 1834-1839, at the same time as his famous work “The Poor Poet” - also depicting a kind of studio (Wichmann, op. cit., no. 125). A further comparable interior scene is shown in “Die Angebetete” (Wichmann, op. cit., no. 123).