The Back Garden, between 1850 and 1860

  • Adolph von Menzel, German, 1815-1905

Oil on canvas

  • Unframed: 19 × 27 inches (48.3 × 68.6 cm)
  • 34 3/4 × 42 3/4 × 4 1/4 inches (88.3 × 108.6 × 10.8 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund and Mr. and Mrs. Allan Shelden III Fund

1991.172

This humble everyday subject, meticulously painted, may be a view from the artist's studio in Berlin. Here, Menzel elected to represent human beings only obliquely, through the traces of their activity: a vegetable garden to supply the kitchen, the red postbox on the fence, the drying laundry. Of particular originality are the unusual viewpoint adopted by the artist and the cropping of the image, so that the whole composition appears to be a fragment as informal as a snapshot.

Paul Meyerheim [1842-1915] (Berlin, Germany)

1950's, art marker (Berlin, Germany)

1991, (Thomas Kessler, Zurich, Switzerland)

1991-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Wissman, F. W. European Vistas: Cultural Landscapes. Detroit, DIA, 2000, p. 62, repr.

Adolph von Menzel, The Back Garden, between 1850 and 1860, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund and Mr. and Mrs. Allan Shelden III Fund, 1991.172.