Living room with the artist's sister

Painted in 1847 on cardboard and held in the Bavarian State Painting Collections, 'Living Room with the Artist's Sister' belongs to the intimate domestic series Menzel made in his Ritterstraße apartment, showing family members in the ordinary spaces of daily life. His sister Emilie appears in several of these works, rendered with the same observational directness Menzel applied to every subject. The use of cardboard rather than canvas is characteristic of these private, rapidly executed observations — Menzel worked on whatever surface was to hand, with no concern for the material dignity appropriate to exhibition pictures. These domestic works were invisible to the public for most of Menzel's long life, becoming known only after his death when the depth of his achievement was fully assessed.

Painted on cardboard with the rapid, assured handling of Menzel's private domestic observations, the work captures interior daylight in an ordinary Berlin apartment. The cardboard support shows through in thinner passages, adding the intimate texture of a personal notation.