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| A hunter flirting with a girl who seems a bit uncertain about his intentions. You can see that the hunter's weapon is a muzzle-loader, still in use in the 1880s and beyond. |
Emil Rau was born in 1885 in Dresden, Germany and died in 1937 in Munich.
He is best know for his paintings of everyday life in rural Germany.
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| Mountains are HARD places from which to grow enough food to survive the year. Multiple types of livestock were the norm. |
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| A rare image of Old NFO from the 1880s. |
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| Scythman enjoying a break with a pretty girl. He is smoking a pipe. The knee of his pants are patched and the toe of his right boot has been repaired. |
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| Unlike the Hudson River School that shrank the human elements in the frame, Rau amplified them. The house and man on the right side of the frame are much larger than the perspective and distance warrant. |
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| Probably hunters. A long-arm is leaning against the bench on the left side of the frame. Chamois horns on left side of frame by window. |
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| Open fire beneath a trivet on far right side of frame. Black ceiling might be soot, it ends at the top of the window in the background. |
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| Clothing (socks?) drying beneath the eves of the roof |
Wonderful details.
ReplyDeleteSimple lives, simple joys.
ReplyDeleteYeah, so that's what I was struck by (and am always struck by with images from these 'times'). I understand subsistence living was a hard road, and of course everything is idealized, but... was life really that much harder? Physically perhaps, because we didn't have technology and machines like today, but then again... we take money (resources) to join a gym and spend time going there to exercise. Outside of professional athletes and circus freaks, was there such a thing as a 'gym' prior to our lives changing so dramatically.
DeleteAnd back to the original question, is this progress?
I am very fond of painless dentistry, ibuprofen, vitamins and corrective lenses for my eyes, In the future, I may be very fond of replacement joints.
DeleteOn the other hand, people were much less rude because it was very difficult to move to another area and start over. We learned how to get along. And, for the slowest learners, there were always fisticuffs to incentivize their learning of the most basic social skills.
Beautiful place but looks like a rough place to live. ---ken
ReplyDeleteHis attention to facial expressions is especially interesting - the side-eye the one girl is giving the other in the fifth picture conveys a lot.
ReplyDeleteMuch more the art I prefer than the modern versions. Thanks as always, ERJ.