"The group of young girls amidst a spring meadow from 1916 is a late attempt to be light-heartedonce more and to illustrate the merry course of life. […] 'Yesterday and today I finally had my five girls outdoors, there was no sunshine, but the gray weatherwas even better for drawing. […] I have to be through with all the study before harvest, so that I can start the picture in winter and complete it in spring.' (C. Bantzer to Arnold Bantzer, 19 July, 1916). This idea for a timeless image, planned without knowledge of the war's duration and its consequences, grew over several years and presumably rested from the first summer to far after the war. The idea was not mentioned again before 1922 […]. The same year the picture was completed in Kassel, in 1923 [exhibited at the Kunstverein in Kassel and] sold to the banking house Strauß in Frankfurt, the same year Bantzer made a portrait of the owner." (Bernd Küster, Carl Bantzer, Marburg 1993, pp. 259ff.). Today the fully executed painting (124 x 205 cm) is in possession of the museum at the Marburg University. The large oil study offered here already shows the composition's most important elements, as well as the bright sunlight and the fresh spring air above the meadow in bloom.