Bavarian peasants on their pilgrimage to Maria Kulm

In 1843, August Ludwig Most, the most outstanding representative of Biedermeier in Pomerania, made two paintings based on sketches brought from Bavaria: “Alpine Shepherds” and “Bavarian Peasants During a Pilgrimage to Maria Kulm” purchased for the collections of the National Museum in Szczecin in 2012. A scene which took place during a religious pilgrimage to the Baroque church of Virgin Mary on the Kulm Hill (Maria Kulm, Chlum svaté Maří ˗ present-day Chlum) is presented in an extensive, undulating landscape near a village called Kynšperk nad Ohří (Königsberg a.d. Eger) in western Czechia. A group of people is standing next to a well with a figure of Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus. Two elder pilgrims are listening to the story of a young girl with a small bundle, who is probably recounting her difficult fate and heading to the sanctuary with a hope of changing it. The painter, as usually, paid a lot of attention to the outfits. The pilgrims’ regional Bavarian travelling outfits correspond to the circumstances. The painting was made with great care for the details, a good feel for the presentation of the human form and the depth of space of the extensive landscape. The presentation is one of the few known landscapes in the wealthy painting oeuvre of Most and testifies to his mastery of this genre, whereas the scene in the foreground is an element of an anecdote, a story, much appreciated by the recipients of art in the mid 19th century.In 2019, together with a file of drawings, sketches and tokens related to the artist, the National Museum in Szczecin also received a preparatory sketch to the painting made in an oil technique on paper. Its analysis reveals the arcana of the artist’s technique and shows the mode in which he worked on the composition.

Dariusz Kacprzak