Landscape in spring with girls

Joseph Wenglein was a Munich landscape painter who specialized in the Bavarian and Alpine landscapes of southern Germany. His 'Landscape in Spring with Girls' (1889) belongs to the figure-in-landscape tradition that was a staple of Munich academic production — young women in a spring landscape providing both the seasonal subject and the female figure that were among the most commercially appealing combination of the period. Wenglein's particular strengths were his atmospheric landscape handling and his sensitivity to the specific quality of Bavarian mountain light.

Wenglein integrates the female figures within his spring landscape through careful tonal management — the girls' forms belonging to the same atmospheric environment as the budding trees and spring meadow around them. His palette for spring subjects captures the tentative greens and the quality of the emerging season's light before summer's full warmth. His landscape backgrounds demonstrate the accumulated observation of a painter deeply familiar with the Bavarian environment.