Garden in Kissingen

Painted in 1885 in Bad Kissingen and held in the National Museum in Warsaw, 'Garden in Kissingen' was made during one of Menzel's many visits to the famous Bavarian spa town where he regularly took the cure. Bad Kissingen, with its landscaped gardens, elegant promenading guests, and the specific quality of Franconian summer light, offered him a different visual environment from his Berlin subjects or his Prussian historical canvases. Garden scenes of this kind belong to his private observational practice — small works made for himself, studying light and atmosphere in specific outdoor settings. The Warsaw museum's possession of this German subject reflects the pre-war collecting history of Central European museums. Bad Kissingen attracted many prominent Germans to its waters in the second half of the nineteenth century, and Menzel's repeated visits placed him in the company of the educated and official classes who took the cure alongside him.

The spa garden setting provides Menzel with a subject dominated by cultivated nature — paths, planted beds, trees — and by the quality of Bavarian summer light. The work on paper (likely gouache or watercolour over drawing) allows rapid notational capture of atmospheric effects.