William I Departs for the Front, July 31, 1870
by MENZEL, Adolph von, Oil on canvas, 63 x 78 cm
This painting is a key document in the new German nation’s propaganda, balanced between the gracious culture of the past and the bourgeois monarchy of the post-Industrial Revolution. The combined flags of Prussia and Germany on the Unter den Linden housefronts testify to a great new nation - modern Germany - united by battle against the invading French.
In this painting Menzel displays an approach that points to the most literal aspects of early Impressionism.