Youth Picking Oranges

Although officially considered a third member of the so-called German Romanists, Hans von Mar�es, long resident in Italy, moved far from the dramatic narrative of B�cklin or the ponderous perspective of Feuerbach. The Berlin-trained von Mar�es was Germany’s major prophet of Modernism, filling a critical role as that nation’s Puvis de Chavannes, the French master who was thirteen years his senior. Like Puvis de Chavannes, von Mar�es followed the Nazarene and Pre-Raphalite revival of wall painting. His major commission was the 1873 murals for the Library of the German Marine Zoological Station on Naples.

The Youth Picking Oranges is a life-size oil sketch preparatory to the fresco on the south wall of the library. Though this work is strikingly reminiscent of C�zanne, two years von Mar�es junior, the French painter was almost certainly ignorant of the German’s art.