By the Church

Painted around 1890 and held in an unidentified collection, 'By the Church' belongs to Menzel's late subjects involving religious architecture and the social life that gathered around it. Church exteriors, like beer gardens and market squares, were social gathering points where the community assembled at regular intervals, and Menzel's interest in public social spaces extended naturally to these civic-religious sites. By 1890 he was in his seventies, a celebrated figure in German cultural life, his major historical paintings long behind him. Late works like this typically show the continued vitality of his observational practice even as his public ambitions had diminished. Menzel's long career — he died in 1905 at the age of ninety — meant that his late works were made in a very different artistic climate from his breakthrough decade of the 1840s.

The church exterior setting combines architectural observation with the animated presence of figures gathered outside — two elements Menzel had been combining for decades. The outdoor light falls on the building's facade and assembled figures with the directness of his mature observational style.