The Hospital of the Holy Ghost, Lübeck

Albert Gottschalk was a Danish painter who worked in the naturalist tradition, producing atmospheric views of urban and suburban Denmark and northern Germany. The Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Lübeck, one of the oldest and most architecturally significant charitable institutions in northern Europe, provided an ideal subject for an artist interested in the texture of historical places. The hospital was founded in the thirteenth century and its distinctive brick Gothic architecture had been admired by painters and writers throughout the nineteenth century. Gottschalk's 1887 canvas records the building with the quiet attention to light and material that characterizes his best work.

Gottschalk renders the brick Gothic architecture with sensitivity to the warm tones of aged masonry under northern light. The composition is direct and documentary in character, with the architectural subject filling most of the canvas.