The Sunday Hunter

Who’s actually hunting whom here? A Sunday hunter doesn’t make a living from hunting; he’s the law-abiding citizen who tries his hand at hunting on his day off. Wearing a top hat and a dark coat, he crouches on a tree stump, his rifle held at an angle towards the ground. This is hardly what you’d call rapt attention. To the left of the path, of all things, a hare stands up, clearly visible, and seems to be sizing up the motionless gentleman. That is precisely the joke: the supposed prey is more alert than its hunter. A light-coloured path leads through meadows towards the dark cluster of trees on the horizon, above which stretches a grey sky, its light highlighting the yellow-green expanses and the winding path. Brown, green and muted yellow dominate the landscape; the black top hat sits within it like a small exclamation mark. Carl Spitzweg, a Munich native and originally a chemist, depicts everyday life in the Biedermeier period with affectionate irony. His humour arises not from exaggeration, but from his demeanour, his detachment and an inconspicuous figure by the wayside - and I find myself rooting for the hare.

On the Leonardo canvas with its satin-finished surface, the muted colours retain their painterly coherence. The dimensions of 36 x 21 cm give the expansive landscape room to breathe, without the small punchline between the hunter and the hare being lost. Effie frames the picture in black; the golden inner zone borders directly on the sky, meadow and earth; there is no passe-partout, and the ‘Fillet Allie’ once again traces the transition to the subject. At the bottom, we see how differently the same gold can appear: next to the almost black strip of vegetation, it glows brightly, whilst against the light-coloured clouds it remains more subdued. On the outer edges, the black continues the hunter’s clothing and the shadowed areas. To my mind, this alternation of gold and black perfectly captures Spitzweg’s point: a somewhat solemn scene centred on a man who, whilst hunting, spends most of his time sitting.