Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). View source
The Poor Poet
Carl Spitzweg · Romanticism & Landscape
- Artist
- Carl Spitzweg (1808–1885)
- Date
- 1839
- Dimensions
- 36.3 x 44.7 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
The Poor Poet shows a penniless writer lying in bed in a cramped attic room under a leaking roof. He wears a nightcap and is wrapped in a blanket to keep warm, an open umbrella hangs above him to catch the drips, and he holds a quill in his mouth while counting syllables on his fingers.
A closer look
The stove is cold, and next to it lie the poet's manuscripts, ready to be burned for heat. His clothes hang on a line, a candle stands in a bottle, and his books are piled on the floor. Spitzweg treats the scene with affectionate humour rather than pity: the poet seems perfectly content in his own world of verse, ignoring his miserable conditions. The picture gently mocks the Romantic idea of the starving artist, and it became one of the best-loved paintings in Germany, an emblem of the Biedermeier era.