A Player with a Hermit

genre

The forest seclusion and the appealing life of the hermit, the quiet of the trees and the retreat into a simple life close to nature were the expression of a new attitude to life. What Schwind painted here is the longing of the Biedermeier period for happiness in simple surroundings and for a calm that had long vanished in pre-industrial urban society. In his contemplative life committed to God, the pious hermit seemed to be manifesting a kind of religious feeling that was ideal because it was "private".

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About the Artist

Moritz von Schwind

1804 – 1871

Austrian painter, graphic artist, and designer, trained in Vienna and in Munich under Cornelius. Schwind represents the tail-end of Germanic Romanticism and his most characteristic works depict an idealized fairy-tale Middle Ages, with knights in armour, damsels in distress, enchanted woods and castles, and much loving depiction of costume, architecture, etc. He was at his best working on a small scale, as in his numerous book illustrations and his woodcuts for Fliegende Blotter, a humorous Munich periodical. In his young days Schwind, who was an accomplished violinist, had been friendly with Franz Schubert and late in his own life he depicted Schubert's Vienna circle in a number of drawings.

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