View of Szczecin from Łasztownia to Castle and St James' Church

Views of Szczecin from the Biedermeier period were characterised by attention to reality and precision in reproducing details. One of the leading representatives of the German Biedermeier painting was Ludwig Eduard Lütke (1801-1850), who presented a panorama of Szczecin in several of his works. He was born in Berlin, where he led an active artistic life as a painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He developed his artistic skills in the workshop of his father, Peter Ludwig Lütke (1759-1831), a respected professor of landscape painting at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. He was interested in maritime and landscape painting, mainly of Saxony, Silesia and Pomerania, and created views of his native Berlin, Potsdam, Rügen, the Harz and the Rhine. His works gained popularity thanks to their reproduction with lithographs printed at the Royal Lithographic Institute in Berlin. The artist exhibited his works several times in Szczecin. In 1836, he painted a fragment of the city and the port seen from a boat-building workshop on the river island Łasztownia (Lastadie). The artist depicted the part situated north-east of the Old Town, with architectural details of the buildings near the Szczecin Castle. The veduta shows a faithful image of the port, with a detailed reflection of the work in the boat-building workshop and various ships on the Oder. The canvas was painted from nature on the commission of August Moritz, a Szczecin merchant and city councillor, and presented at the exhibition Kunstverein für Pommern in 1837. In 1851, the merchant bequeathed paintings from his collection to the city for the future municipal museum. These included Lütke's veduta with the castle and the Old Town and a twin veduta with a view of Szczecin between the Long Bridge (Lange Brücke) and St John's Church. The veduta with the castle, which belonged to the City Museum (Stadtmuseum) operating since 1913, was duplicated in 1939. After the war, it was considered lost. It was found in the 1970s and purchased for the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin.

Małgorzata Peszko