Carl Spitzweg's "Butterfly Hunter"

Hello my lovely ladies – I hope this finds you well today!

 

It's been a tough week, but I chose a piece of art for today that has butterflies in it, because your Great-grandmother (Mom-Mom) loved butterflies, and she was an artist.  She tried all different kinds of art – I have a wax painting that she did a long time ago, and I know she liked to work in pastels a lot, and watercolors…and when your dad and I were little, she would send us these funny, funny letters where she would draw little pictures to go with all the words; everybody had a face (like an avatar on the Wii) in the letters – mine had brown pigtails, your dad had big blue eyes and short brown hair…and the one for Gram-E had curly brown hair, and Gramp-Es had a big moustache, Mom-Mom drew herself with red hair and Pop-Pop with just a little hair and a thin moustache…so she would write down the persons' name, but then draw a funny face above it…and she would tell us stories about their travels on ships (and draw boats) or the things they saw (and draw little buildings), and there was always some mention of the weather and she would draw sun-shines or rain clouds and rainbows.  They were wonderful letters.  So today we do butterfly art for Mom-Mom.

 

Carl Spitzweg lived in the late 1800s and was from Germany.  He was both a painter and poet, but I think he's mostly known for his paintings.  I tried to  look up one of his poems, but couldn't find one…I kept getting pictures of one of his paintings about a poet instead of the poems themselves.

 

Carl trained to be a pharmacist but got sick, and while he was getting better started to paint things – so he was self-taught as an artist.  He travelled to Prague, Venice, Paris, London and Belgium to study art (lots of the old artists seemed to be able to just travel the world and look at art and paint in new places – kind of a cool way to live!

One interesting thing about his work was that in the 1930s, a "copyist" painter named Toni reproduced 54 of his famous paintings – Toni was a good guy who just painted reproductions; he wasn't trying to do anything shady…but other people took Toni's name off the reproductions and sold them as original works of art.  They got caught and went to jail for 10 years!

So, here is Carl Spitzweg's "Butterfly Hunter".  I like that the butterflies are gigantic and the man has a little tiny net to catch them in.  I like that his glasses are reflecting the sun, and it makes him look like he has bug eyes.  And I like that it makes me think of Mom-Mom today, and how when I was a little girl when we visited her house she had a glass box full of porcelain butterflies that were SO beautiful and we would admire them together.  She was something of a butterfly herself – all bright colors and sparkling in the sunlight.  We're going to miss her.

 

Know that I love you and think that you're awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula