MÜHLIG, HUGO1854 Dresden - 1929 Düsseldorf


Title: After the Winter Hunt.
Technique: Oil on canvas.
Measurement: 60,2 x 80,5cm.
Notation: Signed lower right: "Hugo Mühlig".
Frame: Framed.
Provenance:
Private ownership, Germany.

Hugo Mühlig is one of the most important and successful landscape painters at the Düsseldorf School of Painting. He came from a family of artists in Dresden: his father, an uncle, and later, a cousin were professional landscape painters. The young Hugo Mühlig followed the same path when he entered the Dresden Art Academy in 1871, which he left - with an interruption - in 1880 as a master student of Paul Mohn. In 1881, Hugo Mühlig moved to Düsseldorf, which, thanks to Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and the Achenbach brothers, had developed into an art centre in the 19th century, especially for landscape painters. Hugo Mühlig quickly made friends with colleagues in Düsseldorf, became a member of the 'Malkasten' and succeeded in the art market. In the following years, he participated in national and international exhibitions and was awarded the title of professor in 1898. He found motifs for his landscape paintings on the Lower Rhine, in the Eifel or during regular stays at the Willingshausen artists' colony. Hugo Mühlig discovered his very own way of depicting people in nature. Nuanced, detailed observations and characterisations of people reveal themselves to the precise observer, but his overall theme is the harmonious existence of man in nature. In his own painting style with impressionistic and naturalistic elements, his landscapes were highly appreciated by a city audience that felt the increasing alienation from nature.

The painting presented here is a typical 'Winter-Mühlig': the hunt has ended on a frosty, slightly hazy but sunny day. Hunters and beaters gather on the banks of a small river that flows through a typically flat Lower Rhine landscape. There is a pot on a fire, the contents of which will warm those waiting inside. The foxes and rabbits are laid out and stowed on a horse-drawn cart. Around this central group, the painter leaves plenty of space for the vast, snow-covered plain with the trees on the bank that stretches into the depths. And then Hugo Mühlig invites the viewer to take a closer look: the makeshift fireplace draws the eye, as do the partly characterised hunters and drivers, who are freezing and some are red-nosed; some are lighting their pipes. There is the funny red scarf with white polka dots that the coachman wears under his cap; a dog quenching its thirst away from the group by the river; and there, half buried in the snow is a bottle whose high-proof contents are cooled in this way before it too provides inner warmth.

This mixture of atmosphere and narrative, so typical of Hugo Mühlig, characterises this painting and is as inspiring today as it was 100 years ago.