Eduard Dietrich Sold at Auction Prices

Adelheid Dietrich, Still life with flowers

DIETRICH, Adelheid (1827 - 1891). Still life with flowers. Oil on board. Signed l.l.: "Adelheid / Dietrich 1869". Board size: 13 x 17 inches; framed size: 21 1/4 x 25 1/2 inches. Born in Wittenberg, Germany, Adelheid Dietrich was the daughter and pupil of the painter Eduard Dietrich (1803-1877). Some fifty works by Dietrich are known. Nearly all are flower paintings characterized by a crystalline intensity and painted in the finest detail and with extraordinary technical facility. These botanical subjects are much in the manner of seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painters, particularly as filtered through the eyes of nineteenth-century northern European artists. Dietrich?s stunning Still Life with Flowers highlights the reasons for her great success. In a tour de force composition, Dietrich portrayed a mass of highly naturalistic wildflowers intertwined with a delicate dragonfly. Vividly colored and wonderfully animated, the flowers are painted with such naturalism that they appear to spill over into the viewer?s space. Every nuance and tiny detail is perfectly delineated, down to the crystalline drops of dew that glisten on the petals. Dietrich?s Still Life with Flowers is a master work by this celebrated German woman painter.