Blind Man's Buff

Undated and held in the National Gallery in London, 'Blind Man's Buff' depicts the traditional parlour game in which a blindfolded player attempts to catch others, a subject with a long history in European genre painting from the Rococo period through the nineteenth century. The game's combination of play, touch, pursuit, and the subversion of normal social relations through the imposition of blindness made it a recurring subject for painters interested in social observation and the depiction of leisure. Menzel brings his characteristic observational directness to this traditional subject, rendering the figures in their game-playing activity with the same attentiveness he brought to ballrooms, concerts, and historical ceremonies. The National Gallery's possession of this work broadens the holdings of Menzel in British public collections.

The game's movement and the blindfolded pursuit create compositional dynamics different from Menzel's more static social scenes. Figures are distributed in the playing space with the informal energy of actual game-playing, their postures of avoidance and pursuit observed with social accuracy.