Harzerin mit Kind. 1845.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated on fencepost. 23,3 x 17,7 cm (9,1 x 6,9 in).

PROVENANCE: Private collection Luxemburg.

Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim was born in Danzig in 1808 the son of the decoration painter Karl Friedrich Meyerheim. He was taught by his father as well as the theater painter Johann Adam Breysig at his Danzig art school. In 1830 he moved to Berlin and studied at the ‘Akademie der Künste‘, which was led by Johann Gottfried Schadow. In the following, Meyerheim and his friend, the architect Heinrich Strack, went travelling. Together they published the book "Architektonischen Denkmäler der Altmark Brandenburg". He also published lithograph views of his hometown Danzig. Around 1840 Meyerheim entrely turned to romantic genre painting, especially the depiction of folk and children’s scenes. He found the motifs in bourgeois and rural life in the Altenburger Land, in the Harz mountains, on the Rhine and in Hesse. His style shows clear influence of the Düsseldorf School. What is so characteristic of Meyerheim‘s painting is both a meticulous illustration of details, as it is the case with this work, especially in the faces of mother and child. On the other hand it is the psychological illustration of the depicted person. Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim died in Berlin in 1879. The Meyerheim has brought forth many more painters. Both his brothers became artists, likewise did his sons, of which Paul Friedrich Meyerheim (1842-1915) was most successful. [CB].