Lot 350 Dα

In 1917/1918 Josef Eberz's life was closely connected with the collectors Mr and Mrs Heinrich Kirchhoff in Wiesbaden. In this period his work was provided with new artistic impulses stylistically and in terms of motifs through the variegated botanical exoticism cultivated lavishly in the newly designed garden of the Wiesbaden villa. Kirchhoff had very probably sought advice from Darmstadt's Grand-Ducal Garden Inspector Joseph Anton Purpus, among others; by the artist's own account it was there in particular, at Darmstadt's botanical garden, that he painted his motifs directly from life. For Eberz the patronage of Kirchhoff's commission began “a period of ecstatic creation, in which he created botanical fantasies, tropical, exotic, southern gardens and landscapes in which people and animals usually appear only in a subordinate role.” (F.J. Hamm, exhib. cat. Wiesbaden 2017, op. cit., p. 149). According to information provided by Sibylle Discher, Museum Wiesbaden, the still life here fits in well with this period and comparable pictures by Josef Eberz from the Kirchhoff collection, even if it has thus far been impossible to document a “Weihnachtskaktus” as a motif.