Tourists in the Mountains

Tourists in the Mountains of 1869, at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, captures a phenomenon specific to the mid-nineteenth century: the emergence of organised leisure tourism into the Bavarian Alps as the railway brought mountains within reach of middle-class Munich and Vienna. Before the railway, alpine travel was arduous and largely the preserve of scientific expeditions, military men, and the very wealthy; by the 1860s the train made the Berchtesgaden area and other Alpine destinations accessible for day trips and short holidays. Spitzweg observes this new social phenomenon with his characteristic mix of affection and mild comedy — the tourists in their slightly urban clothing navigating terrain that calls for rather different dress, their appreciation of scenery slightly self-conscious and learned from guidebooks rather than intimate with the landscape. The Hamburger Kunsthalle's late Spitzweg holdings document the artist's engagement with modernity's transformations of the Bavarian world he observed.

Canvas with mature technique from Spitzweg's late period; the alpine landscape is rendered with atmospheric perspective and the naturalistic light of his fully developed outdoor style. Tourist figures carry the compositional double function of providing human scale for the mountains and delivering social observation through costume and posture. The mountain backdrop extends the spatial depth beyond anything available in Spitzweg's interior or village subjects.