|
While at work on a watercolour, Adolph Menzel used both the recto and verso of this small page from a sketchpad to blot colour samples from his brush, although he had already used the sheet for sketches. According to Claude Keisch, the almost over-painted pencil studies depict the young children of Menzel’s sister Emilie and brother-in-law Hermann Krigar, his niece Margarethe and nephew Otto Krigar-Menzel, born in 1860 and 1861.
On the reverse of this study, one also finds a pencil sketch from the artist’s domestic surroundings, an arm and hands with needle and thread.
A comparably over-painted sheet of studies from the early 1860’s can be found in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, in this case with a rejected self-portrait in the pose of Frederick the Great’s courtpainter, Antoine Pesne (Fig. 1).