- Artist or Maker
- Hans Thoma
Germany, also active Austria, 1839-1924 - Title
- Die Quelle (The Spring)
- Date Made
- 1895
- Medium
- Oil on canvas, in original hand painted frame
- Dimensions
- Canvas: 44 1/2 × 34 1/2 in. (113.03 × 87.63 cm)
Frame: 56 × 46 1/2 × 1 1/2 in. (142.24 × 118.11 × 3.81 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2007.19
- Collecting Area
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Curatorial Notes
Hans Thoma belonged to the Deutsch-Römer group of German artists working in Rome in the 1870s who regarded Italy and the Italian people as the living heirs to classical thought and beauty. The Deutsch-Römer favored mythological and symbolist subjects over the representation of observed reality seen in academic and impressionist painting. Here, the landscape is rendered naturalistically and the figures drawn from life, but the lute-playing muse and cavorting putti transform the picture into an unspecified timeless allegory, perhaps of spring.
- Selected Bibliography
- Thode, Henry, ed. Thoma: des Meisters Gemälde in 874 Abbildungen. Stuttgart; Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1909.
